Illustrated Self done!

I FINALLY finished my posters!

I had multiple problems during this brief:

• The graphics tablet I borrowed from uni wasn't calibrated to my laptop (spent multiple hours attempting to delete my Wacom Bamboo driver so the Intuos driver would work, and eventually had to manually scour for and delete ALL Wacom files after multiple restarts to no success)
• I'm not great at using Adobe Illustrator (I've only ever used it once for the Vector brief), so particularly in the print out positives and digital files you can see that things don't line up properly where I've not used the pen tool etc etc (I just need more practice)
• I missed my print slot by about 10 hours because I didn't anticipate how long it would take me to draw to whole poster! I had to print at Vernon street where they (thankfully) don't need you to book a slot.
• The font I picked which I thought was standard (I've downloaded A LOT of fonts and can't remember which ones are standard or not) was not, so when I opened the Illustrator file at uni ready to print, the font had changed and I had to spend a while adjusting it which meant that the registration for the pink and yellow screen positives changed a bit because I was a bit lazy/rushing to be able to print in time and changed them individually on the different files for each screen (turns out I was right to adjust it because I was in the print room until closing on both Thursday and Friday and finished in the nick of time!)
• THE SCREEN SPLIT! DISASTER! Thankfully, I had already printed all the yellow, but it split just after I'd done the registration for the pink on kodatrace and was flooding the screen for the first print. So all of the pink is slightly off registration, despite re-doing the kodatrace, as the screen didn't stay tight even after taping it back together.
• The colours didn't come out as I anticipated. The parts that I hoped would be darker where the pink and yellow overlapped were not clear. I tried to amend this by adding white to the pink, but didn't realise the white is even more opaque!
• I didn't manage my time that well - I only started planning the final design on the Tuesday before the deadline because of CoP hand in, and then the sunny weekend, so didn't start final drawing until Wednesday night, which meant I was rushed, especially considering my inexperience with Illustrator, the graphics tablet calibration, and that it was the first time I'd ever screen printed properly on my own (so I'd never washed or coated a screen, which took time to learn)

This is what I hoped it would look like:

(Despite the off-registration text)

Things I've learned:

• I need to practice using Illustrator and Photoshop more, and graphics tablets!
• Next time I screen print I know not to have the design so close to the edge of the screen, as the pressure of the squeegee can split it!
• White screen print ink makes things lighter, not more transparent!
• I CAN do things! I've been scared to try screen-printing outside of briefs where we've had to (even though I really wanted to) because I'm quite shy and nervy to ask for help, but once I get going it's fine!

What I'll do differently next time:

• Plan ahead!
• Start earlier!
• Place my design(s) on a bigger screen (or two screens) with more space around the edges

Despite multiple things going wrong and being fairly ambitious for the project, I think it did still turn out fairly well! It's a perfect illustration for my first year of uni - not only the drawn content, but also the evidence of the process: that I want to get better at using digital software, I want to screen print more and sometimes I make mistakes and take risks that don't work out! But that shouldn't stop me from trying!