I started by playing around with some basic fun, neutral colours - just the first things that came to the brain, lots or orange and red. I paired a lot of darker and lighter hues but this didn't work out great as I kept worrying that the lighter colours wouldn't show up great when printed, so used them for smaller elements - meaning that I used mostly orange and red, something to think about in future - maybe stick to middle/ darker hues?
I was feeling really inspired by Good Press' printed matter - especially the halftone textures that they used in the background of their designs, so I decided to try it out. I took my chosen colours and made some halftones by making gradients. I then loosely cut out some random shapes using the lasso tool - I wanted these to have a certain feel of naivety to remain playful and expressive. Alone and out of context they look silly, but I knew when blown up to a larger scale they would look right.
Attempt One: Sugar Paper
Annoyingly I thought that I had picked up a piece of bulky newsprint but accidentally picked up this sad, grey, piece of sugar paper as the library was out of what I wanted. I'd like to say that it stood up to the print test but it did not. Because of it's natural, textured surface and colour - the end result ended up with really muted colours and unexplainably reminds me of hemp products? It has that natural, sustainable vibe that I was really not going for.
I also definitely didn't prepare the document for print correctly, I ended up with weird pages once again and actually cut some of the words of the article off - this is okay though because I rectified this in my next experiment:
Attempt Two: 'Antique White' and smaller size
Attempt two was a bit more successful. I chose Antique White from the library and set about printing once again - this time leaving plenty of bleed to I wouldn't cut anything off. This also resulted in the final outcome being a perfect size, not too big not too small, so that was good.
What wasn't good was that this paper stock is 135 GSM. It's more like a card, and it's really not great for folding poster zines. All of the paper in the library is this GSM so I'm going to have to outsource some lighter paper stock!! This is a bit annoying but really has to be done, this stock is much much too thick, and the only other one that the library offers is newsprint which is risky to put through a printer.
Despite this issue, the colours popped a lot better on the off-white stock. For a first colour experiment, it's not bad - but definitely needs amending. They don't really fit together as cohesively as they could and I know that I can do better. I was feeling a bit deflated and fed up of colour not working out for me, so I decided to take a familiar approach:
Attempt Three: Yellow
If anything is familiar to me it's this style of design. This is starting to become what I associate myself with, and for some reason deem as 'good', I suppose it's just what I like. I've already reflected and learnt that I use yellow and black a lot by accident, as seen in my Instagram:
I'm not sure why but it just seems to be what I always fall back on. It made me feel good, because I didn't like my first attempt at a more refined, experimental colour palette so I went to my safety style: black over print on a bright yellow stock. In the moment I didn't even realise I was doing it, it just felt natural to pick out the yellow paper and go for it.
The thing is, it's not bad but I'm a bit bored of it by now. I really like the effect that it has but I need to try out something a bit more ambitious. I think that the black overprint on the yellow stock looks amazing on the poster side, but the zine is crying out for something a bit funkier.
I was also obviously having the same problem with the 135GSM stock, it was really annoying to work with. As well as this, I noticed that the ink was smudging a lot, and when I was using my bone folder it was rubbing off. I think that this could be because I was going against the grain of the paper, but I don't think that the fact the paper was thicker helped.
Things to think about:
- Use MULTIPLE colours, don't just rely on a brightly coloured stock.
- Big shapes are kind of working but refine them a bit more? Less sharp edges maybe, larger half tone? Maybe more of a pattern than shapes? Stuff to experiment with. Maybe print out gradients and cut out shapes physically. Think of other ways to make textures.
- Think about where the hell you're going to get some thinner paper stock from and get it quickly.
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