Stefan G. Bucher

Since finding out about the other store fronts that the 826 writing company have, I came across this guy: Stefan G Bucher who designed the 826LA Echo Park Time Travel Mart. He's also the creator of the online animation series; 100 monsters. (Something I came across long before finding out he was a graphic designer.)

A few of his designs for the shop:

(It was fully working and then decided to break on the opening day.)

Knowing about these store fronts gave me a great leap up with my "what is good" work. As stated before I decided to go with Dyslexia is good because it allows us to be creative in non conventional ways. My idea is a store front for a Dyslexia support drop in centre.

Sam Potts Inc

Since finding out about the Super Hero store I've been looking into the sole designer for the project.

Sam Potts Inc. was an independent graphic design company in New York City that was in operation from June 2002 through August 2009. Clients ranged from publishing/art world/restaurants/the music industry.

As founder and sole employee, he served on the 2007-2009 board of AIGA New York and on the advisory board of 826NYC. Potts also taught graphic design at the School of Visual Arts.

I find his work easy on the eye's with a good mixture of type and stock imagery. I would highly recommend his work to people on our course who use a mixture of collage and paper stock. It's hard to explain because I'm not good at putting stuff ike this into words so I'll show you an example instead:



See? It's clean, easy on the eye's and not too overly cluttered with detail. It's taken me a while to come around to finding this type of design appealing. I've always been set in my ways in what I liked as to opposed what was actually good. I think a few people on the course will also appreciate Potts Work.

Some examples of his best work:

(The Bible)

(The clumsiest people in Europe)

(They Might Be Giants CD and Book)

(Book Redesign for classic books.)

(The Area of my expertise)

826NYC - Concept Research

826NYC
A non-profit organization (located in Park Slope, Brooklyn) dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.

Brooklyn Superhero Supply
826NYC is located in a "secret lair" behind The Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company, which sells capes, grappling hooks, utility belts (new and vintage), masks, tights, deflector bracelets, bottles of chaos and anti-gravity, secret identity kits, and more.

Visitors to the store can try out capes for free in a cape-testing wind tunnel. (The store sells new and back issues of Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, The Believer,Wholphin, and other McSweeney's publications.

The Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. also carries a complete stock of publications written and edited by students at 826NYC including Trapped: The Encyclopaedia of Escape, Sonny Paine, and issues 1 and 2 of The 826NYC Review. The store front is literally a front for the charitable organization, with all sales going to the organization.

The design of the store features many tongue-in-cheek signs and features, and the staff treat their products as real super-hero supplies, and visitors as real super-heroes. The secret lair to the student learning and activity centre lies behind a swinging bookcase.

Flexography

This print process is used for printing thingd that are generally quite difficult to print on, such as foils and plastics, mostly food packaging.

A rubber sheet is made using a mirror image and then wrapped around a cylinder where is prints ink directly onto the substrait. A flexography press has it's advantages over other rotary printing methods as a wider range of inks can be used with it.

Rotogravure

The images are etched onto copper sheets instead of aluminium like offset litho and then wrapped around a cylinder. It works upside down in comparison to offset litho, with the impression cylinder on the top instead of the bottom. There is also one less cylinder involved, cutting out the 'blanket' cylinder all together. Because this cylinder is missing, the image etched onto the copper plate is a mirror image to ensure that it prints the right way up on the paper/plastic/fabric.

The vast majority of rotogravure printers are web fed, and the few sheet fed ones that exist are classed as a 'speciality market'. One example of roto printing would be newspapers. Rotogravure presses are the fastest printing process and can print onto very wide substraits, such as vinyl flooring.

Offset Lithography

Offset litho uses etched aluminium plates wrapped around a cylinder which then transfers ink onto a rubber 'blanket' cylinder and from there onto the paper/plastic/fabric ect.

This process can either be sheet fed or web fed, web being huge rolls of paper used for very large print runs.

This process uses CMYK colour process and has a different part of the machine for each colour separation, therefore an image is printed using four different etched aluminium sheets.

Screen Printing

A screen is made of a piece of porous, finely woven fabric called mesh which is stretched over a frame of aluminium or wood. Originally human hair was woven into screen mesh but these days mesh is made out of man-made materials such as steel, nylon, and polyester.

Areas of the screen are blocked off with a non-permeable material to form a stencil. A negative of the image is made so that the ink will go where there is no image space. For example, All white spaces will be filled with black to form a reverse image.

The screen is then placed atop paper or fabric. Ink is placed on top of the screen and a bar/piece of wood is used to spread the ink across the mesh and the design.

Please tell me it's not just me who wants one of these?

Pad Printing

"Pad printing is a process that can transfer a 2-D image onto a 3-D object"

This process is used for printing onto objects that would otherwise be impossible to print on, such as pens and keyboards. A silicone plate is used to press the image into the surface and because the plate is flexible, it can be applied to almost any shaped surface.

Digital Printing

Digital printing is the reproduction of digital images on a physical surface. It is generally used for short print runs, and for the customization of print media.

The process differs from lithography, flexography, gravure, and letterpress printing in several ways:

-Every print can be different, because printing plates are not required, as in traditional methods.
-There is less wasted chemical and paper, because there is no need to bring the image "up to colour" and check for registration and position.
-Because there is less setup, it is useful for rapid prototyping, and cost effective for small print runs.

This is the most popular type of print process as anybody can have a digital printer in their house. Print proofs are not required and unlike most print processes, the ink sits on the surface of the paper and dries there and there is far less wastage.

What Is Good Presentation

No word of a lie, I do apologise for any spelling mistakes you may find in the slides.
My "What Is Good" = Dyslexia.

Famous Dyslexics

I've been looking into famous dyslexics and I found that most of them where even artists/entrepreneurs/actors/inventors/singers and even presidents.

• Rancid’s singer/guitarist has never had a driver’s license or bank account due to his dyslexia. ( I wonder how Garnier paid him for that wonderful WUT WOO song)
• The inventor of the telephone (Alexander Graham Bell) reportedly over came his dyslexia.
• Orlando Bloom once said, “Dyslexia is not due to lack of intelligence, it’s a lack of access. It’s like, if you’re dyslexic, you have all the information you need, but find it harder to process.”
• Einstein could't talk until he was four or read until he was nine but he stays in peoples mind as a genius.
  

Dyslexia Is...

For my What Is Good, I have been looking into Dyslexia, trying to pick it apart from the bad to the good. I have Dyslexia and ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) however, there is still I lot I can look into. For example, the history of Dyslexia, how it came about and the different types as well as how it is sometimes deemed as controversial.

Print Presentation

This is the presentation we where asked to make over the summer using our knowledge and research into the print process. We had to present to a small group of the class for five minutes. Here's mine with the addition notes. It's not fancy but it get's the point across.

So when we work in a program like photoshop and try to choose a colour the print can not print, the exclamation mark will appear next to the colour picker. This new colour indicated will be the one printed instead. If you haven't realised the colour has been changed, the print out can appear dull.

These seven colours would be made from Cyan, Yellow and Magenta.

Cyan + Yellow = Green

Cyan + Magenta = Purple blue

Yellow + Magenta = red

And layering all three together would create black.

However as mentioned it would be murky and not a true black.