As a cohort of MA Creative Arts visual artists, all exhibiting together, it was important to have a cohesive poster to represent all of us for the event.
Charlie had been part of the MACA social media focus group and so agreed to produce the design for the poster. We were all consulted for name ideas and themes. I suggested the name NOVA as a word that means ‘new’ and is associated with stars coming into being. I felt this hit a few of us directly, with space theme, but represented the start of our next chapter as artists, going out into the world.
My second contribution was to suggest some layout ideas with Charlie in case it was helpful in designing the poster. I felt it would be useful to mirror the perpendicular design already used for the MUSE Festival poster, which represented the entire MACA output for final projects.
Charlie asked us all to provide an image of relevant artwork or themes that could represent us on the poster. I provided the following circle which has become part of my Circle Quilt. I edited the photograph into a monochrome version as well as providing the original coloured version (see below)
Here are Charlie’s final designs. We agreed to print a large sized (A0) set for the department areas using the version with only the earth motif, and save the multi-motif version for digital output.
Following the design of the poster we wanted to also have A3 handouts to provide artist info to visitors. I was tasked with converting Charlie’s design into a file that could successfully print as a single colour riso print onto coloured card stock. We chose orange ink onto blue cardstock.
First I had to convert the file, using Photoshop, to make it a true black and white image, then invert the image so that the text and landmass of the globes would print in orange leaving the background and negative space representing the sea to remain the blue colour of the paper.
Top left is the black and white master copy which is read by the riso machine to create the stencil screen.
Top middle is a proof print with the Fluorescent Orange ink cartridge, which was blocking in the machine and not performing well. It also wasn’t the right shade of orange for this purpose and too transparent.
Top right shows the solid orange ink proof print on white paper, which worked perfectly for what we were after.
After a quick file adjustment to add a hairline edge to the right side of each of the globes, so they read clearly as the earth and not just smudges, we went for a print run on the intended blue paper (a dusky pale blue – perhaps a nod to my use of woad!)
Below is the final proof. There is a line on the print, caused by the rollers in the machine, which we could have obsessed about, but part of the reason for opting for a riso print was to have a ‘handprinted’ style to the prints. We have decided to embrace it in this case.
Charlie printed the A0 versions on the posters on the oversize printers in the MAC Lab. Getting closer, now to finalise whether we have PSP as our exhibition space, as we will now need to adjust the location on these posters if not!
