Project 3: Gag Band Design

Art Journal

8/5/2021

Towards the end of my last project, I've made an early start on the next project.

But it’ll be good to make use of my time on some things like researching about screen-printing, one or two artists and get some idea for what I'd like to create for some poster and t-shirt designs. So these pass four weeks, I was asked to design gag band that's never existed before by printing a poster design in silk-screen and printing a t-shirt design by Lino-printing. The gag band I was asked to create is called... "Slab Gammon". Which is funny to design a band named after a tasty gammon steak with fried eggs and chips. Planning a poster design in silk-screen was a difficult task, because I creating the poster design of "Slab Gammon" in three-printed layers, I had to do a lot of thinking on how to create a poster design in three layers. In the first week one of my tutors has reached me and everyone else how to do silk-screen printing a several layers starting with radome drawings before printing a couple of colours. Before I did any printing of the band, "Slab Gammon", I needed to get some ideas or inspiration from any kind of band that's been known from the movies/tv or from any kind of band of music. So thinking carefully I decided to take some ideas from a movie, "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World". Through the whole movie there had been gag bands in a lot of scenes. So looking at them has helped me get an idea of how to create a poster design of "Slab Gammon". The session I did on my first year about silk-screen printing, I was able to make three layers. The first layer is like of a comic strip with the explosion icon in the colour of orange. The second layer is of the band with their instruments and sound effects, with the colour in red. The third and final layer is with the rest of the instruments and title "Slab Gammon" in the colour of black. The background on these prints is in white, using A2 cartridge paper. During these silk-screen prints I had to wait for each one to dry up, and then go to the next print in 2 to 5 days. While I was waiting for that I get to work on designing the t-shirts with Lino-printing. I did a lot of planning for the t-shirts, looking at some of them I realise that there was too much work in some of them. So I chose three design ideas that had less work in them. What I worked at, was Lino-cutting them out, using one of my sketchbooks and printing them out with black ink to test the effect, it seem to be going really well before I get them printed again on some t-shirts. I bought the t-shirts from Primark, in four different colours (two white, one red and one blue). The first three prints on the t-shirt designs were of a single picture or title, and the fourth t-shirt design, is something I wanted to try by adding the title on top and a member of the Slab Gammon at the bottom. The first two designs were off a title. One of the titles has its own explosion icon in the background. The second repeated four times, "Slab Gammon!" The third design is of a member of the Slab Gammon, playing with the drums and another explosion icon in the background. And the fourth and final design is another member playing guitar. When I showed the work to my tutor Dwayne he told me my work is lacking research, I need to get some more reference from my research into my work. For example I looked at work that's link with Vintage Western from the start of the project, it would've been good if my poster had some links to it. The poster could've added a bit more detail on, cause there was a lot of white space in them, and my research and development work needs to be influenced your final designs. So if I'd have looked back at the posters Dwayne needs to see how they have effected my final choice and process I used. I also need to keep to what is asked in the briefing, I sometimes have a tendency to go off track slightly. This is something I'll admit to, so I'll try to work on that. The good thing to what Dwayne said is I obviously had fun with the T-shirts, he could see that I have been experimenting with the prints in the processed. The other point that links to the last projects is that I need more reference in my drawings – when I've drawn the band, rather than use a paused clip from a film, I could've asked a friend to pose for me to help out.

But I will continue to work hard!! Going in second year at university is lot harder than I thought, my first year or at college, but I’ll always keep doing my best.