The Engagement 4Cast
Inspiration is an important part of the design process for any creative person. We all get excited by different things: some people love taking long hikes and appreciating nature, some like going to galleries and seeing pieces of sculpture and paintings that move them, some people use “recreational substances” to get inspired. But as a design geek, my secret passion is silk screen posters.
Screen printing is a printing technique that uses a woven mesh to support an ink-blocking stencil. The attached stencil forms open areas of mesh that transfer ink as a sharp-edged image onto a substrate. A roller or squeegee is moved across the screen stencil, forcing or pumping ink past the threads of the woven mesh in the open areas.
– Wikipedia, Screen-Printing
As a designer who mainly focuses on the web, I find often that I am doing the same thing over and over (make a header, make a footer, stylize the sidebar). At its worst, it inspires a tedium and lack of focus that leads to poor design. Silk screens instantly fix these design doldrums. There is an inherent sense of immediacy, control, and deliberateness in the posters that silk screen artists make. I find that they have the best handle on typography, layering/transparency, pattern, white space, and color that I have ever seen. Looking at these elements so boldly executed inspires my approach to web design-taking a better stand with color and type, owning my negative space, trying something completely crazy…Is it getting hot in here?
I can only imagine how inspiring the actual process of creating a print with this method would be if the results alone get me so worked up. The physical element of pushing the ink through a series of overlapping screens that you create…watching the design come to life…I would love to do that someday. I can’t believe I didn’t take an art class back in school that covered it! Screen printing, you’re my heeeero.
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