OUGD502 OUGD504 Visiting Professional G.F. Smith

Matthew scharff visited from G.F. Smith to talk us through what they do and what we can get from them as designers.

I was quite surprised to find that they are in fact a third part that buy and sell the paper on but add finishes and touches along with their brand. Their range can be separated into:

Coloured

Coated

Uncoated

Textured 

Special

This is a very simple way of looking at a very large, very varied range of paper. This doesn't include the options of creating layered or duplex papers specific to your needs. They have a very small minimum on orders which allows for small print runs of high quality. They also have mechanisms to ensure that you are getting the paper you need for the job that you are doing. For example, they have a machine that you simply feed a pdf into and it will cut out a packaging net and even score it so that you know the weight of paper will do what you need it to.

Matthew gave us a lot of advice. Perhaps the most obvious but the most useful was the idea of thinking about the stock you are going to use from the very start of a brief because it effects the look and feel of a project so drastically. He showed us a lot of examples of money saving book folds and binding that were really inspiring and possibly usable as an inspiration for the program design for the Leeds Arts Party Program as part of my responsive module.

I had no idea about this but apparently you can buy paper directly from G.F. Smith but perhaps the best way to do so is to tell the printer the specific stock that you want used and they will contact the paper supplier because they know all the technical details that you might not for the printing process.

The colourplan range is one of the most popular ranges that G.F. Smith has on offer. They even have a downloadable colour pallet that you can work with digitally so that you can mock up designs against the colours of stock available through colourplan. Suprisingly they only stock 2 coated papers one of a more grained organic look and the other more classically photographic.

They have a new service where they make one of books to specific specifications. This will coast around 100 a pop but is good possibly for a portfolio or something that you want to keep forever. There is a cost calculator online to allow you o work out the specifications you want to achieve. The best way to order small paper samples is through the papersmith section of the website.

Although I couldn't find an image of it he showed us a map from one of their exhibitions. It was cleverly using layered colour paper that folded up in a three dimensional fashion to show the location of parts of the exhibition. This could be a great inspiration poit for the map I need to design for the Leeds Arts Part conference. 

OUGD502 PPP Improving Photography

I have been aware for quite some time of my lack of photographic skills and knowledge, so in order to mediate this I have started using Instagram. I know it seems quite a minimal action but not only odes it have a great number of designers using it to promote their work, it makes me think about the composition and lighting of every photo in a way that I have never had to do on a regular basis.

OUGD502 PPP Visiting Professional The Print Project Ideas For Self Branding

 Today we had a workshop from Nick from the Print Project. We learned how to design and work with setting wood type.

We worked with proof presses to do simple prints of our designs.

We had quite a few sizes and style of type to choose from.

The furniture used to hold all the letters in place was quite difficult to get used to but had the feeling of a real craft to it. I can see that this kind of job would be one that required patients and an endless eye for detail. I really loved it though. This is possibly I want to look more into.

I know from my COP project last year that there are ways to letter press our own digital designs. This is something of particular relevance to hand drawn type. I talked to Nick about wether or not this would be possible at the print project and he talked me through the etching process they use to create images and ow this could be used with hand drawn type. I think I will look further into this and possibly think about getting in touch with him about giving this a try.

I had a few goes at trying t piece together my self branding but in no situation did it feel like this was the right format for it. It has a softness to it but it feels a touch industrial for me.