Finally

After what seemed like an eternity, opening day of the 2008 baseball season is finally here. The Mets are coming back with hopeful thoughts of erasing the horrible collapse of last season from everyones memory. Johan has definitely done his share to make everyone forget and look forward to the future. There are still some questions about the #5 spot in the rotation and some possible depth and age issues to be found, but All and all the team looks to be much stronger overall than the start of last season. Suzi and I also bought tickets to opening day at Shea next Tuesday.

Stupid Busses

I'm back from another Beatle-fest and it went great except for some mishaps with the NJ Transit. I managed to miss a few busses, get on wrong busses, make a few unplanned transfers and wait in the cold for about an hour until midnight for a bus that never came. Because of my bus issues I missed the deadline to enter my poster into the art contest. I never got a print I was truly happy with anyways, but there wasn't really anything worthwhile in the whole "contest" thing anyways, nothing that I would call art. There is still a lot I have to learn about the intricacies of screen printing, but I guess the more I do it, the easier it will get. Back to the fest, I did get to meet, however briefly Pattie Boyd, George Harrison's first wife and the muse behind some great songs. There was quite a rush over her book signing and I ended up having to wait a really long time to do it. I met some really nice people from New Jersey though and talking to them made the time go by a lot faster. I ended up giving them the poster I brought too, so it didn't completely go to waste.

I made a last minute t-shirt from one of my poster screens that turned out really cool. It was very spur of the moment, I just searched my closet for a blank shirt, found one and tried to print on it right off. I think I will make some more of them and try and sell some on my eventual etsy shop. I also bought an actual replica bronze badge to go with my Shea jacket, from the same people star bought my jacket from (beatlesuits.com). There was also tons and tons of stuff that I would love to have but probably can't ever afford. There are original Beatles ticket stubs, including some from Shea stadium, which go for about $300-$2000, and of course the holy grail of Beatle items original autographs which I heard one went on auction there for $2600 but in the marketplace they were about $15,000 all the way up to $46,000. That is just nuts.

Makin with the screen screen

Well I didn't get as far as I would have liked on my new poster but I'm still in good shape to have it done by next weekend. This one is a lot bigger than my previous one (15"x20") and as it got larger the complexities went up as well. I got a great deal on some bigger screens at Standard Screen on Friday so that was nice. Once I got the screens, I coated them with the emulsion Friday night. So far, so good. First obsticle was printing my transparencies for each screen, and with the size I am working at meant printing four 8.5x11 sheets then trimming and tiling them together. I managed to get the five color design onto three screens, so that meant 12 sheets total.

After I got the positive transparencies done I need to expose the screens to light. Now since this poster is so much bigger than my past one it was very difficult to make sure all the edges and corners of the screen got as much light as the middle. It took a few tries and three ruined screens but I eventually got them all burned right. The text layer was the most difficult by far though since there is so much coverage plus a lot of intricate little shapes from the smaller letters and counter forms.


Now that I have the screens done I need to worry about the actual printing of the piece. I'm sure the size of it will be a hurdle again here and will have some learning to do. I also am going to be playing with a new technique, transparent inks.

All good though, all good.

Beatly Goodness

So in spite of American Idols butchering a lot of their music this week, I have been working on my new Beatles posters that I hope to have ready for printing this weekend. Next weekend is Beatle-fest in New Jersey and I would like to have a few posters to enter into an art contest so hopefully I can get some people interested in buying some. As it is now it is a bit more complex than I would like at this stage of my printing career, but I guess the designer side of me is winning. Here I will need to make 5 different screens and figure out some transparent ink stuff as well. I guess there is no way to learn better than just jump in there head first. We'll see.

Classic/Contemporary

Tonight we saw industrial designer Tucker Viemeister of Rockwell Group talk at an AIGA/NY Classic/Contemporary talk. We have been to all three of them so far where we also saw Louise Fili and Jim Sherraden of Hatch Show Prints. All these events have been very low key and informative with short presentations and very insightful interviews. With smaller rooms and crowds it is a much more intimate place than the big ones like the Sagmeister talk a few weeks ago. It is nice to be involved in the ny design community, even if I can't bring myself to talk to anyone else I don't know there. The next one should be in April and will probably be just as good. Suzi and I are also going up to Boston for the 2008 HOW Design Convention which will also be ridonkulous.