examples of items students like

Rubix cubes are great and timeless. It would be great

if i could print on each side so when its completed

it shows the message. That way it gives them

more incentive to complete the puzzle.

Print Process: PAD, Screen Printing

People enjoy reading things while they're on the

toilet and students always need toilet paper. I could

adapt it to have the information onto it.

Print Process: Printing on offset biodegradable sheets,

using flexography onto a tissue paper

substrate.

every student needs a good pint glass,

and having one that is customized makes it

so much easier to know its yours.

Print Process: PAD Printing, Screen printed onto flat sheet

then heat pressed onto glass. also laser etching.

its getting cold and students wear hats. the beanie is cheap to get

hold of and can be easily transferred from sex to sex.

Print process: Screen printed, can be lain flat.

memory sticks are an essential part of the student lifestyle,

they hold copious amounts of information and can be

carried everywhere.

Print process: PAD, 3d design

to have logo printed onto.

Mugs, these have the same appeal as the Pint glass.

Print Process: Flexography, PAD, Screen print before

design heat pressed onto.

Tote bags are a huge hit at the moment, they are

durable, flexible and can carry a lot. they are cheap

to buy and replace.

Print Process: Screen Printing

Old schools always in and therefore YOYOs are always in.

These would be great to print on to raise awareness.

Print Process: PAD

For some reason glasses with no glasses in are a bit

hit at the moment, personally i think they're pointless

but everyone seems to love them. so i wanted to see how

they would be printed on.

Print Process: PAD

Students

I did a short survey around my college to establish what students liked getting for free. I already established that students dont really like giving stuff if they dont get something back. So from that point i wanted to see what merchandise they liked getting apart from standard flyers and posters because i dont want to do that, unless its necessary. The responses i got seemed to gear towards one of special edition items. Things you would get to promote a night for example: key rings, beer top openers, magnets, tote bags etc.

They also steered me towards looking at a huge night out in Leeds called Moustache. A lot of my friends work for this night, so i went to talk to them and discuss the merchandise that they have sold and what they are planning to sell.

I like the idea of having a range of merchandise, like this but a little bit more extreme and a bit more mature. I like the simplicity of the designs and you can see they are easily transferable. Creating a brand is important to my project and i want to get he log design right. There are a variety of print processes used here: PAD, Screen printing, Heat transfer.

Tattoo

I like the idea of the branding on the back of the neck. This tattoo would have been printed digitally as a one off print on a cellophane and then transfered onto the back of the neck. This is something i really like the idea of, it could be used as a promotional idea and used to help raise the awareness.

Tickets

I am also looking at train tickets, especially UK ones as this is the destination country i am focusing on. The trains and underground will be used a lot to transport these women. These are something i am defiantly going to look in developing into my project. I also like the idea of using a rail card, it has scope to be developed. The background of the tickets will be lithography printed and then printed on top in order to get the image.

Tickets

here i am looking at boarding passes and flying tickets in association with travel. I want to look into the aspects of travel and what you need in order to get into countries. Seeing as the women are trafficked all over the globe im looking at examples of boarding tickets. they all work on the same template and are digitally printed at the desk when you arrive. the other problem is, not a lot are trafficked by planes as they need passports but they tend to get taken off them. Its still good to have a look at them though and see what aspects i could use.

Above shows the packaging you used to get with your tickets for those who would travel first or business class. Now the women would defiantly not be using these but the traffickers might so i just wanted to see the packaging. They would have been printed lithography way as there will be a lot of them, although the tickets need printing individually these are standard.

Embossing

Again i am looking at the embossing technique and using solid substrates to put the design on.

Above: This is an example of debossing. The text

is heat pressed into the card, without using any ink

or foil. This produces a very clean 3 dimensional look.

Above: This is an example of embossing and using

a spot gloss varnish. This makes the text

stand out and gives the graphic more depth. When the

light hits the design, it makes the text stand out and

shine, giving more texture.

Above: This is an example of debossing, this is an impression made into

the substrate. I particularly like this design

because of the textured substrate, giving it more depth.

Above: This is an example of embossing a

business card. It uses a thick substrate to outline the

image.

Silk Lamination

I really like this process. It is used to highlight small parts, mostly on business cards. Its water resistant, tear resistant and its used well with the vibrant colours. This could be used in my designs for highlighting certain text.

Varnishing

I am looking into the finish varnishing. Varnishing is a colourless coating that is often applied to a printed piece to either protect the substrate or enhance the design. Varnish can produce three finished - gloss, dull and satin - and while not strictly a varnish, UV coating can also be used to add decorative touches to designs. The varnish lockins in the printing ink under a protective coating to help prevent ink rubbing when the substrate is handled.

Varnishes can be applied in-line or 'wet'; which essentially means it is treated as an additional colour during the printing process.

1. A wet layer of varnish is applied onto a wet layer of ink and both are absorbed into the stock as they dry, which can reduce the visual impact of the varnish.

2. An off-line varnish is applied once the printing inks have dried, and therefore less is absorbed by the stock.

Varnish tends to work better on coated substrates, again because it is less absorbed by the stock.

there are a lot of different types are varnish used, and each fits a different design. Below is a list of what they are:

Gloss: Gloss varnish reflects back light and is generally used with photographs or other graphic elements in brochures, this is because it adds a sharpness and saturation to the images.

Matt (or dull): Matt is used typically with text heavy pages to diffuse light, it reduces the glare and so increases readability. It gives a non glossy, smooth finish to the printed page.

Satin (or silk): A satin varnish is a middle option between gloss and matt. It provides some highlights but is not as flat as matt finish.

Neutral: This is machine sealing application, of a basic, almost invisible coating, that seals the printing ink without affecting the appearance of the job. It is often used to accelerate the dying of fast turnaround print jobs (such as leaflets) on matt and satin papers, upon which inks dry more slowly.

UV Varnish: UV Varnish is a clear liquid that is applied like ink and cured instantly with ultraviolet light. It can provide either a gloss or matt coating. Increasingly, UV varnish is used as a spot covering to highlight a particular image because it provides more shine that varnish.

Full-bleed UV: The most common type of all-over UV coating, largely because it produces a very high gloss effect.

Spot UV: The varnish is applied to highlight discrete areas of a printed design, both visually and by imparting a different texture. The effect of spot UV can be maximised when it is applied over matt-laminated printing.

Textured spot UV: Textures can be created with spot UV varnish to provide an additional tactile quality to a print piece. Examples of textured spot UV varnish effects include sandpaper, leather, crocodile skin and raised.

Pearlescent: A varnish that subtly reflects myriad colours to give a luxurious effect.

Above: Textured Spot UV

Above: Spot UV Varnish Spot Gloss.

Above: Spot UV

Above: Spot UV

the Kiss

This is a letter press event invitation used in New York. What i am most interested in is the metallic foil stamp of the kiss. Firstly i really like the design, you can see it's been broken down in a vector and the spots are clear with adds more texture to the image. When the light catches the image it makes it shine and catches the colours in different ways. Using the mixed purple and red helps highlight different areas of the image. Foil stamping is something i am really interested in and defiantly want to try and incorporate into my design.

Garbage Bags

This is elegant packaging for something very simple and quite disgusting. Garbage bags. It shows you everything that you need to know about the product without pumping you with loads of information. I love the typography, using helvetica makes it it clean and clear. By pilling up the typography like they have done illustrates the garbage pilling up without using actual images. This is something i want to use in my project, the simplicity is key because my information is quite thorough and powerful so i dont want to overcomplicate my designs, as people wont read it. By printing on the thick brown car is cost effective as the substrate is cheap, and by breaking the designs into CMYK it mean that printing costs will not be as expensive. As i am doing a campaign/charity event i dont want it to cost a lot as it goes against the grain.

Boxed UP

Here i am looking at some packaging idea on different substrates. Some are not commercially viable for a mass production but for some one off prints this design can work. everyone loves getting box sets, either for DVDs or music because of the trawling through the artwork and the information you get with them, but this time Matiensgohome have put it all onto a USB. The logo is engraved onto the small USB and onto the box you receive. The USB holds 10 albums and photographs, so you get everything on it. What i like is that it is current with the new technology era we are going through now. Its novelty but it has a point. Its also beautifully done. I like this concept of passing information, and could be something i look into. It holds visual information without the hassle of printing on paper, creating flyers and posters etc.

Colour lecture

Learning about Monotones, and Duotones.

Duotone: A duotone is a tonal image that is produced using two colours.

I found this workshop so interesting and how to use spot colours and pantone's within photoshop. Its so important to understand this. Below i've dont a step by step guide, this is for my own purpose because i dont want to forget how to do it.

1. Turning the image into a black and white image then turning it into a duotone. The image box comes up and then change it accordingly.
2. This is in monotone so it will only set one colour on the background. This is when you use the small menu to change it into duotone.
3. You can also change the balance, to enhance the image through the hue and saturation.
4. With this image I have turned it into a duotone. which means i can then add two colours to the image to enhance the picture more.
5. This is the second colour i chose to use to make it a darker image.
6. I then changed the hue and saturation in order to enhance the faces in the picture and pick out the detail.

Rasters and Vectors

rasters and vectors is something i have always struggled to get my head around, i dont really know why. So i have decided to research it, and look into it.

So far, i've learnt that rasters are photographs and vectors are illustrations and these are the mainstay images formats of printer material today.

the problem with raster images is that at their normal size they are fine but as soon as you enlarge the image it begins to pixelate. A raster file can be changed into a vector file, which means even a large degree of upsizing produces recognisably sharp lines. As vector graphics are based on drawn paths they remain crisp regardless of the degree of enlargement.

These are the raster based images, the top one shows the image itself (of our beautiful house bunny Dizzy!) and then i zoomed in and it shows how pixelated the image goes.

Colour workshop

Working with photoshop and breaking down the colour within an image. I found this to be a useful workshop because it helps you edit the colours and utalise photoshop in a way that i've never done anything before. This is an image changed from RGB to CMYK, which is the print mode for an image.

Foil Blocking

Foil blocking is a process whereby coloured foil is pressed on to a substrate via a heated die, which causes the foil to seperate from its backing. The foil is a think polyester film containing a dry pigment. Several terms are used to describe this process including foil stamp, heat stamp, hot stamp, block print and foil emboss.

Flat stamping: a basic flat stamp that gives a slight raise above the surface and usually no impression on the reverse side of the substrate.

Multi-level Stamping: a die created with different levels and textures that can produce elegant designs. Also called sculptured foil embossing, it provides eye-catching results, but is more expensive.

[a decade of difference insert image]

this is an invitation created by Untitled design studio for London-based arts agency Iniva. It features a silver foil block and red typography on clear plastic substrate, in which some of the text seems to disappear as the viewing angle changes.