SixteenHT - A short story

The SixteenHT brief was probably the most fun of all the briefs in the module and the quick turn-around projects have been great for portfolio pieces. The brief originally started as just working for a table at the Leeds Artists' Book fair, but it turned out that the book fair itself actually opened up more opportunities for the collective. Two more projects were done under the SixteenHT collaboration after the book fair was complete. The collective itself worked really well, and everyone pulled their part.

I think that weakest aspect of the brief has been the promotion of the collective, as we have concentrated a lot on producing the work for each event rather than promoting ourselves before and at the event. We have had some personal promotion in the form of online networking such as twitter, but I think it could have been extorted more.

The strengths during this brief were definitely the speed and quality at which work was produced in the collective, and the idea generation tht came about in group discussions. I feel that this brief has encouraged a lot of quick decision making and fast, high quality designs.

Another strength in the brief was the use of screen printing as a process, something that I have not explored thoroughly before but now feel fairly confident in using. It is a useful technique to get the hang of, and can produce some really impressive designs that are not possible any other way. The decision to work exclusively with screen prints was definitely a good move for the collective at the moment.

This brief has been the mst enjoyable of the year because it encourages physical print process; not something that I get to deal with very often when designing from behind a screen. After the course, I do not want to lose touch with screen printing. I have already started researching nearby print resources and home-print techniques to be able to explore the process even more.