Fleeting Phrases | Final Posters

Final Posters, finished & ready for selling!

Fluro colours were the best choice.

SRA2 posters to be sold at:

Camberwell Internal Show

Fleeting Phrases| mind your b's & d's

No matter how many times when letterpressing, it is always worth the effort to do a proof before properly printing. Sometimes the wrong sized font gets put back, like the t in residential above. Even though there are nicks so you know which way up to place the font sometimes your eye tricks you, and you place the c how you would normally and then when printing it reads back to front. Ds and Bs like Ps and Qs are always annoying to use. But I feel there weren't too many mistakes for a first proof. I still don't understand why I got the d in residential correct but not in the other sentences. I'll need to train myself to have a printer's eye.

Fleeting Phrases| Poster Development

I have spent the last 2 days, a total of 12 hours letterpressing, a bit of back ache, a lot of giggles and some useful bits of knowledge have been gathered along the way too. But they are finished I have printed both the silver ink, along the left hand side and the pantone black ink in the centre (roughly- looked better slightly off centre thanks to the silver being on the left hand side, when centred literally using a ruler, didn't physically look centred, balanced this by adding a few mm along). Due to luckily prior thinking through of the task I was able to set up a slot for the type to go in each time I was printing different posters, making this a lot quicker and easier process. (worth the effort to space appropriately in advance). Still need to buy frames for these to go in to for the exhibition, but that will get done soon. It is now time to more on to how to package these when sold- which I am almost finished doing, using bright colours (specifically fluro) to keep this theme throughout.

Fleeting Phrases| setting of type

 

Letterpress workshop is back open! Unfortunately the letterpress studio has been closed for the last month, so I wasn't able to set up any type or do any printing, but I did have time to work out digitally the composition for the posters and what information I would like on each poster and of course what typeface I would like to use. I photographed the posters so far- then edited them in photoshop. I have chosen to use Univers Light Condensed, I love the ampersand from this typeface, and just think it is a rather beautiful typeface to work with. (little to my knowledge did I know how awkward it is to set up, a challenge I love to take on!*)  Main pieces of information about the quotes shall be ruled then say the name of the person, their age, and where I spoke to them. Then in silver (10pt univers) in the bottom left hand corner, left aligned, shall be information about the series.

e.g. Fleeting Phrases, 1 of 6 quotes that encouraged a smile. Made with (set in?) Gill Sans & Grot 9.

This is done in silver and smaller type as I feel the details of the person are what count and I see this as additional information, that is maybe not necessary but what I feel should be included.

Letterpress Studio

Just to show what it is like to work with small type in letterpress (luckily not 6 pt this time around).
The type is first set in a composing stick (left) because all of these are to be easily set in a bed, I have made them all the same line length (according to the longest line). Using leads on the base and top of each sentence, I then spaced out the lines of type, so they fitted the appropriate line length. I spaced these using quads, thicks and thins, making it sturdy to work with when later printing.
Obviously after proofing the type there are always a few errors, which due to the size of this type meant I had to work with tweezers, to replace certain letters (seen on far right photo). I shall set up the printing bed tomorrow and hopefully print some of the silver on the posters.

*Difficulty with Univers typeface.
- From what I can gather after speaking to James (the technician) there are different heights of type across the World, European (called Didot spacing) and Anglo American (English, American). This means that 12pt in America and England will be the same height but a different height in France or Sweden. Univers is a Swiss typeface, created in European heights, to work easily in studios here, they converted it to Anglo height, but obviously its a tad complicated and makes spacing awkward to do. Creating a wave like effect when printing if correct height spacing isn't used.

Fleeting Phrases| video of letterpressing

^ video of myself downstairs in Camberwell letterpress.
Hopefully this video will begin to show why I love this press.
Printing the fluro colour for one of my posters. 5/6 in the series.
It says give me your number. you are beautiful. mostly in GROT 19.
One of my favourite wooden typefaces, can't remember the name of the other typeface, shall update when i can remember.
Once this press is set up, which takes a long time, especially as I am centring all the type, it takes about an hour to print 25 and tidy up, love it!

Letterpressed Posters

So work on one of my other FMP has begun! And it is going amazingly, letterpress is such a long process but worth it in the end. There will be a series of 6 letter pressed posters in the end, all done on the same paper stock (zerkall) in fluro colours (check the back pages of the pantone book). There will be a base line of text explaining where the quotes came from in gill sans (roman 12 pt), all in black with a line rule above. And all of these posters will fit in the format of SRA2. Sticking to these restricted guidelines, should pull all 6 of these posters together- creating the look of a series without having to use the same typeface throughout on the main text.

Reasoning behind these posters

--> I get inspired by people and communicating with strangers, I used to commute into London almost everyday for the first two years of my degree, and met a new and wonderful person almost everyday. I realised that a lot of the work I do is made thanks to these random conversations as it starts me thinking in a new light and triggers off all these ideas in my head.
So these 6 quotes are from 6 fleeting conversations that I have had with strangers and the quotes are what made me smile or laugh when meeting them. Haven't finalised the title of this project yet, but something along the line of funny fleets, need to play on my words more though. I am onto my third poster, and hopefully the basic fluro colours shall all be printed by this friday, so then when I return after Easter I can just print the black. The colours are intense and am loving the mix of modern colours with old school printing. I cannot wait to use Grot 19 as the next typeface, should look amazing!