As I originally thought I was going to work alone, I wanted to make something that would be cheap and easy to make with only one pair of hands, and also something that would look effective without too much fiddly work.
A couple of years ago I printed random lino cuts onto card, which I then cut into geometric nets. I folded them into geometric 3d shapes and attached them onto string to make a garland- which then got posted to my sister.
As I have lots of old lino and paper at uni, I thought I could spend my budget on printing off the nets onto thick paper, printing lino patterns on the back, then folding to create a patterned garland.
However, Sophie and Chris also needed to do the task, so we decided to broaden this idea from a garland, to bunting, to creating a party pack.
With the look of the party pack, which we decided would include a gift/party bag, a party hat, bunting and a cake bag, we wanted it to be suitable for both adults and children. Trying to capture that retro whimsy of old birthday parties, whilst using printmaking to embassies the homemade party feel. Using our combined experience of paper folding, print making and parties- we were confident that we could produce an aesthetically pleasing set of products.
Business Plan
- Audience: 'Instagram mothers', hipster-y audience.
- Materials- white bags - £2.50
brown bags- my own, bought and used for props a few months ago.
screen prints- set up from Chris' project.
paper- from uni
wool- my own
party hats- £1- Chris bought a pack to use as templates
- Design- Clean and simple but with a trendy and retro edge. Focus on pattern design and colours that are complimentary but not overdone.
Research and Inspiration
- Meri Meri
We looked at Meri Meri as they sell very sweet party wear that has a clear design and a very specific aesthetic. Again, it relies on that traditional idea of kid's parties and taps into the audience's affection of nostalgia (cone party hats, confetti etc)
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| Screenshot from Meri Meri's homepage |
Like the original printed garland, we thought about using Lino to print abstract patterns onto the items, but Chris mentioned that he had a screen of 3 layers of pattern, and as we wanted to save time (and Chris' work is very good) we decided to go ahead and use screen printing across all the items. We also agreed this was a better idea as the oil based ink used for lino takes much longer to dry, and we felt we had a greater range of colours to work with using the acrylic paint for screen printing.
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| Chris' original design |
We each chose a colour and decided to use bubblegum pink, a soft red and a teal/blue. We thought it was important to not use colours that are overdone, such as mint green, pastels etc. We nodded to the trend of bubblegum pink, but broke it up with the bolder colours.
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| gift/goody bags on the drying rack |
We liked the pink and so kept one of the sheets aside. Mark had a workshop with a different course so we had a break from the screen printing room until he was done.
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| the gift/goody bag, card for bunting, cone hat and brown cake bag. |
We went back and carried on printing the different layers onto the different items. We did the same colour palette across all the items as we felt it was important that the items came across as a 'pack' and all matched.
I think we were quite lucky that we got to choose each other to work with and we were a team of three, it meant we could easily make decisions, we all have a similar taste and like the same kind of work, and we could all make things easily in the screen printing room. With one person setting the paper, one person printing, and one person moving work to the drying rack we managed to get the items printed quickly and efficiently.
After everything had dried we went about taking pictures of the party items in action. As it had just been my birthday, I brought some cake in to use as a prop- as well as some party bag toys that I had left over from a party last year.
Below is the three different layers, I think the colours work really well together and look really bright and fresh.
Using the props I brought it we arranged the products to show the aftermath of a party :
We wanted our photos to reflect the kind we see on the Meri Meri website, clean white backgrounds juxtaposed with brightly coloured products. The toys and toy animals add to that nostalgic 'kitsch-ness' that we were after, and go well with the colours and patterns.
I was really pleased with the outcome of our task- I think the products are a high quality and wouldn't look out of place in a shop. We also used our initiative by using materials that we knew were easily accessible and saving time by using a design that we already had.
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