Screen printing

Today I undertook the tense task of screen printing the J-cards. I would say its fair to comment that I have been putting it off slightly all week due to my lack of experience and therefore confidence screen printing. I have done inductions both on foundation and here but have never actually used it as a tool within my design as it doesn't really tally with the way I work. I also knew it was going to be tricky due to the incredibly small margin for error. Due to the practicalities of finding relevant cassettes, there were only 3 sets of paper stock to print on for the final 3 outcomes, meaning each print would have to be practised multiple times to establish a confidence in the prints.

I got into uni for 8:45 and fortunately managed to secure a printing bed. With my screen fully exposed and dry I set everything up and started to mix my paints. Due to the restricted colour pallet within the desired aesthetic only the standard registration red and black inks were required. Upon seeking advice from Mike yesterday, he suggested that due to the slightly slippery nature of the appropriated paper stock, I should mix my ink 50/50 with the binder. Finding this perfect mixture and preventing the thick ink from drying in a warm print room proved a tall order all afternoon. I had to clean out a blocked screen at least 4 times and constantly add water to the mixture to keep it moving.

After practising on newsprint I decided to make a little sample stock from some unused J-cards. This went really well so I decided to move on to my first print, which was a complete disaster. In the brief amount of time between prints the black ink had dried up and therefore caused the card to stick to the screen, despite it being taped down! I then overprinted on this card, which was expected wasn't perfectly lined up at all but did improve the clarity slightly. However once I'd got the hang of it, the process seemed a lot easier and I achieved some really pleasing results. One other problem I hadn't accounted for was the fact that all of my J cards were different sizes. Due to unforeseen discrepancies in the size of the front panel, one card was a good couple of CM shorter than the largest! This meant that there are inconsistencies in the layouts and the bottom line of tracklist was lost on a couple of prints as it overlapped the red tape slightly.

Upon review, I would say I am happy with the outcomes. They weren't as clean or professional as I might have intended but fortunately for the genre, inconsistent D.I.Y outcomes can easily be rationalised. The slightly shabby aesthetic fits perfectly with the construction of the cards. I always knew this would be the hardest element of design from a technical perspective, so I can be proud of the outcomes and feel like I have gained confidence and skill in screen printing.

test print

mountain of test prints onto newsprint

final outcomes