Screen Printing update.

Really happy with the results considering it was my first time screen printing solo.  There were a few alignment issues but I aim to screen print all day tomorrow to fix that.

ACTION PLAN for tomorrow-
- Mix different colours
- Buy more stock
- Screenprint over zine pages.

Screenprinting

Today's the day.
Here are some photos of the process.



Firstly I taped up the edges of the inside of the screen.



The next step was to clamp the screen to the bench.

Screen print exposure.

Today I exposed my posters onto my two A3 screens.

The next step was to wash the screen so all the design showed up.

Zine layout

Open publication - Free publishing - More layout

A selection of pages from the Counteract zine. The finished product will have more content but this is just to get a sense and feel of the layout. As mentioned in previous posts, I want counteract to be a concise zine and for it to promote easy reading. I think the layout does that successfully by being minimal and easy to understand.

Screen Printing.


Today I went to the screen printing room and managed to grab the last two A3 screens (the rest were reserved) I've always wanted to screen print solo but never found the time nor commitment but
it seemed relevant for this brief as most zines are screen printed and the whole production is kept lo-fi.

My two stripped screens - I intent on screen printing my posters/covers/postcards

Zine layout tests


Here are some layout tests for the magazines news sections, although this will be the overall layout of the magazine.

Open publication - Free publishing - More layout

Final crit.

Today we presented our work on our table and allowed another table to crit it. This was a great idea
because it allowed those who never knew what my work was about, to crit it on first glance.
We then returned to our tables in our groups and critted eachothers work like last week.

 Feedback sheets

The feedback really helped trigger some new ideas.

Progress Crit feedback.

In today's crit we were asked to get back in the groups we were in last week. This was to see how we have progressed and how we have approached the brief visually. I recieved some brilliant feedback from Charlotte and Kirsty F which was also very thorough. They suggested the logo should be stronger and I should look into the meaning of the work counteract and try and reflect that in a simple logo.

Here was the feedback I received.

Possible final cover designs

These are my two favourite cover designs. I can really see the first one being screen printed and I like the experimental layout of the second one.

Further cover development.

I've decided to push on the development of the front cover of the zine.
As you flick thorough you may notice that I've increased the saturation in the red
and also experimented with the shape of the logo within the composition.

Open publication - Free publishing - More counteract

Cover layout experiments.

Here I've transfered the ideas of the drawings into indesign

Open publication - Free publishing - More counteract

Some of them don't work as well as others. I started off with a photograph of a featured band but in the end found myself throwing
the photo out of the layout and keeping it simple. I've also experimented with musical digrams such as sound waves and vibrations.

ZINE - Cover designs.

With the logo designed I can now focus on the layout of the zine itself. I want to continue the excitement of the logo into the cover of the zine by using interesting and a considered layout.

Thumbnails of possible cover layouts.

Open publication - Free publishing - More counteract

Logo in context.

To put the logo into context I've placed it on a photo of a crowd you would find at a live music gig.

Final logo.

My final logo. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. Whilst designing the logo I took into consideration that it was for a music magazine. Music is often seen as a form of expression and I wanted the logo to communicate that expression. I think the logo, with the shapes and composition, communicates this successfully.

Further logo development


In this design I have singled out the design with the smaller line. This is the logo with and without the "Counteract" title underneath the square. I've come to a compromise and decided that the square logo will be the core logo and the word counteract is not fixed to the square. This allows for easier application whilst still using the type element in things such as letterheads etc.

The logo in line drawing form and reversed out.

Whilst making the final tweaks to the logo I tried embedding the name of the magazine within the logo itself. I'm not sure if this is a wise decision because when made small the text will become illegible.
I do quite like it but that's at a big scale. I would need to scale down the logo to see wether it would see work.

The logo at a smaller scale. It still seems to work. You can still see that it says Counteract but it's slightly more difficult at a smaller scale.

Possible final logos.

Out of the vectorised designs, these two are my favourite.
I just need to decide which one to work on further.

Vectoring the logo designs.

Firstly I transferred the scanned drawings into Illustrator

I used the elipse tool to draw around the existing drawing.

By deleting some of the points of the circle I could transform it into a semi circle. That was the C complete.

By using the star tool I created a triangle by only giving it 3 points.

There was one of the possible logos vectorised.

I applied the same process to the other logos and ended up with vectored variations of the logo.