This was a brief set by an illustration teacher at Staffordshire University and involved designing and producing a concert/artist/band poster using at least one printing process. I took time to develop ideas that related to my chosen artist, Sufjan Stevens and ultimately decided to screen print my final outcome, which was a technique I had never used before.
Most of my ideas were generated through having links to his songs, albums or styles of tour, as I really wanted to make it recognisable to fans of his and contain easter eggs only those familiar with his music would notice. The idea of the stacked hats quickly became my focus, although I felt it may be too much of a challenge and decided to develop a quick digital idea of the first sketch. While this was successful, I felt it was perhaps too simple and didn't feel as unique of an idea to me than the hat design.
Text was an important consideration when designing my poster as I wanted it to stand out in the way that text is often the focal point of concert posters. I experimented with typography letter printing using stamps, which turned out nicely as they added texture. Ultimately however I ended up designing a digital version of the hat idea and found fonts through pinterest to emulate in my own way which i thought suited the style of that design better.
Here is the digital black and white poster I produced in preparation to screen print. The idea behind it is that each hat represents a different one of his most famous albums in order, through the drawings on the front relating to the album art. I really liked this idea as it was unique but also related back to Stevens as he is often photographed wearing multiple hats on top of each other. I also think it has a good amount of detail and would translate well onto a screen print. The big text was drawn out by me based on one found online which I thought suited the style and the main small text was one I felt worked well alongside it. I also added some texture digitally to it to make it look more handmade and I also thought that would translate well onto the screen print. The details of the date, location and time were important to make sure they were clear enough however I think I successfully did this through size font and choice of capital letters rather than lowercase. While some of the images on the hats aren't that clear based onoutline alone, I had a vision for the way they would be clearer through adding text and ultimately executed this idea.
After consideration into the style of my poster and listening to an overview on screen printing, I decided it would be the most time effective and most rewarding method to print my design. Particularly because my design featured a lot of text and intricate lines, it was a good decision.
I think the results of my screen printing were very successful overall. I enjoyed the process and although I had some minor issues where I applied too much or too little pressure I think I have some very strong prints and no issues that cant easily be fixed digitally.
As an extension from printing onto paper, I decided to also do a print onto a plain white t-shirt. This was a slightly different process as it involved mixing the paint with a textile solution to make it washable. It was also more difficult to line up the print as it needed to be on a wooden board inside the t-shirt. When lined up however it was the same process mostly of just bringing the paint up and down. I did this four times to let the paint sink into the fabric. The result of this was very successful and I think it stands out very nicely alongside my prints. To display the t-shirt, I photographed it both on a hanger and modelled on myself. The results of the photos turned out well and I intend to take more in a professional set-up with lights and a camera. I think the print overall works really well as a t-shirt and I am glad I decided to go with the orange as it looks vibrant and pops on the white shirt. If I had more time on this project I would've liked to have printed more t-shirts with different colours, including some of the ones with multiple colours that offset and create drop shadows.
For my final design, I made the decision to take the plain black scan of my screen print and import it onto procreate to colour in digitally. This was a long process because I had to outline every colour individually, apply 'alpha lock' and colour in again to create the grainy effect, thus meaning every individual colour was on a separate layer. The end result is very successful in my opinion as this version makes it much more obvious as to which hat is meant to represent what album. In some ways, I feel the plain printed ones may work better as a mass-produced concert poster however I do prefer this one overall as it is so much more detailed and shows my digital skills. The grainy effect to the colours gives it a very interesting retro feel that I really enjoy. While this is my final piece, I think the plain screen prints also work well as finished posters.
