Already submitted - update

On Monday, I finally finished  painting the board with the final touches some of them needed.

I put all of them in bags, which looks so nice I will probably sell them in them.

I have begun designing some kind of packaging solution, which I hope to perfect by the time they go on sale.

The boards are ready

I worked until 21:00 last night but finally they are ready.

It was not easy to get there.
In the last couple of days I struggled to get all prepared in time for tuesday when they are assessed.

I have misjudged the time required for final touches and fixes. as a result the boards look much better from a distance than from up close.

I think the lesson here is that if I had to do this again, I will not paint the borders. The idea is nice, but I think that with the tools at my disposal they bring the overall look of the products down towards hand madness. The other thing I will do is carve the letters deeper as  there were a lot of roller accidents, where the black paint got into the letters.

Not magnetic.

Yesterday, I purchased a magnetic surface primer.

It was disastrous from the beginning. First, I opened it too close to some of the boards I removed the masking film from. It splattered over them and kind of ruined 3 of them. Which means more spray paint work.

 

I continued by experimenting with the primer on MDF with layers of blackboard over it.

Sadly, the oily nature of it seems to mess with the effectiveness of the blackboard paint. As a result, chalk used on the board does not come off very well. It also seems to prevent the blackboard paint from staying on the surface, it comes off when I wiped the chalk.

The magnet primer has a very weak pull on the magnet I tested. 

It was a valuable thing to experiment with , and I'm glad I tested the amazing possibility of a magnetic blackboard. But I believe that it reduces the effectiveness of the blackboard in favour if a minimal magnetic feature. So I am now, more than ever, convinced I should stickto 'plain' blackboards.

Good investment

Yesterday, while out for pre afternoon tea shop, I decided to enter a nearby hardware shop.

I was hoping to find the kind of paint roller brush I use for the blackboard paint. On a hunch I asked about paint masking sheets, and was suggested a carpet protector adhesive sheet.

I got it and tested it today. It made it possible to mask all of the boards in less than two hours. What I expected to accomplish in a day was done so quickly that I was able to start spray painting the entire stock of boards.

By the end of the day, all of the boards have been sprayed at least once with several already sprayed in colour.

Romi photobombing my studio shot

Tomorrow and Wednesday are heavily scheduled with assessment and other coursework related meetings. I hope to complete spraying the boards so the later part of the week can be dedicated to blackboard painting and portfolio preparation.

Personal note boards in the last two days

After experimenting with the prototype boards, I am yet not able to produce perfect edges for the boards. However, the results I have achieved will have to suffice predominantly because I feel I have to push forward. The group meeting we were sopposed to have this morning was postponed and moved to Tuesday. My hope was that after the meeting I might have a solution.  Because I have a lot to do by that point, if I am lucky, I will have the boards sprayed but not painted by then. In this way, perhaps I will find a definitive solution to the borders problem either before or during this meeting.

Yesterday, after working with the prototypes, I coated all the boards with an MDF sealer.

Today, I began by masking and spraying (in white) several of the smaller 'use me' boards.

After they dried I made the mistake of removing the masks, forgetting the fact that The white serves only as an initial layer to help the later colour layer to come out.
That meant that I had to re-do those covers later, and this made me decide to start covering all of the boards (except one which I have no table space for) with a masking layer.

at first I cover the text area

 

then cover the entire board with a masking layer and cur it to size, removing the mask from the letters

Then cover the back, but leave the masking tape's fringes as this  makes removing them later easier

So far I have most of the boards masked on the front. I havent completed that entirely but I made my job for monday easier by beginning the process. I made the choice of masking the fronts first because it takes more time then covering the back (which is a relatively quicker job)

The work space as I left it, I plan to get back as early as possible on monday!

More update on my personal note boards project.

After some research I decided to abandon the metallic paint/magnetic notepad option, as it seems that that kind of paint has recently been discontinued and that shops are struggling to get their hands on it.
My focus, at the moment, is on perfecting the coloured borders of the boards.

 the problem

What I think will be the solution, is to mask the edges of the boards after the final layer of blackboard paint is applied and dried, then cover the surface with paper to shield it and spray again in a way that will affect only the borders.

 in this photo the visible border has been painted using the method described

 I have also created a timetable for this project which I hope to follow:

 

The way things are at the moment.

After a week of debating with students and friends about my project I decided that the pop-up shop needs my boards and that they are indeed appropriate and relevant for this brief.

I am making 3 bespoke boards and as many as would fit with more general labels.
I bought all the materials Ithink will be needed and now all that remains is finalising the cut file (above) and having it CNC'd.

Panic, on the Blackboard

After the crit on monday;

 when it seemed few liked my idea as it is, I took on the advice to try and come up with a series of objects rather than singular set of 'note boards'.

I feel it is important to note at this point - the original boards were made without any prior planning. I have never used them on any project and I made them with no knowledge of this current project. In my opinion they are perfect for this brief, as they challenge the brief, and in the landscape of the pop-up shop I hope that they will show that all the work has thought and surprises in store.

I looked into making notebooks with blackboard covers to be sold side by side with the original boards. This seems complicated... I may have to abandon this direction.

tests I made for the blackboard notebooks

One of my main obstacles is that the degree shows are being built and planned now. This means that use of the CNC machine is prioritised for 3rd year students. I need to have all I need prepared for a swift execution.

sketchbook showing my plannes for board and list of needed materials

At the moment I am contemplating making a blackboard case for chalks alongside the boards. this is still in early planning stage and I hope to work the details out soon.

my in Illustrator based CNC cut plan as it is at the moment 

New brief: Supply - Trying to figure out what to do in the coming week

The purpose of this brief is to raise money for our degree show next year. It requires us to produce and manufacture a sellable item and the theme we all share is 'notebook'.

Following the crit on monday, I am confident that the best thing for me to do is to build on my previous experience creating personalised blackboards.

I need to decide on the stages of this operation, Because this time I will make two sets of products:

•  Generic, funny but general blackboards to (hopefully) sell for around £15-£10
• Bespoke, personalised blackboards done for users by request which I hope to sell for £20 a piece.

Of course the bespoke items may not be sold on the popup shop's premise, so my biggest task, besides working out how much to spend on materials (paint, roller, sealer, etc.), is to come up with a way to approach people telling them that they can order the personalised boards.

'blackboard' blackboards

After a considerable amount of work, a lot of it on the bureaucratic side, the blackboards inspired by Edward Johnston's hand drawn letterforms are finally up and I am pleased to see, used by those who pass by. I really hope people remember Johnston's name, and visit the museum collection and archive, but even if they just have some good fun that will be great. I have written a short explanation which accompanies the piece and I will copy it into this post (below).

an idea of the scale of the piece.

The chalk compartment and explanation

The sheet reads:

What is this ‘blackboard’ installation and why is it here, in Central St Martins?

The letters are based on letterforms drawn by Edward Johnston, one of the original staff members at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. Photographs of these letterforms reside in Central Saint Martins' museum collection and archive, which is accessible to any student.

I had never heard of Johnston before coming to study at Central St Martins, however, I learned that he designed Transport for London’s `Underground' logo and is also responsible for the alphabet design on which their typeface (‘Johnston Sans’) is based.

These blackboards are an opportunity to engage with this college’s history and contribute to its future. Draw whatever you want on them.

And next time you talk to someone who has never heard of CSM, you may casually drop into conversation that 'one of our staff designed the tube logo' - you will not be making it up.

My work on showcase for the 'hidden treasures' brief

At the moment the work is displayed near the museum, soon I shall put up the full installation near the library.

My little blackboards

In order to reduce waste from the cutting of my blackboards, and in hope to make up for some of the expenses making them incurred, I have produced around 20 rectangular MDF pieces that I hope to sell.

After painting these in blackboard black they could be used as a notice board or for drawing on. I labeled them 'note board' and today painted the first three.

What I hope to present tomorrow + troubles.

 Here are two examples are what I hope to present tomorrow in class.

I want to print these on adhesive paper, and I attempted to do so last Friday.
Only a few minutes before I wanted to print anything, they told me that the printer which prints the  stickers seized to work.
Because it costs quite a lot of money to print, I decided to wait till Monday morning and try to print again, hopefully the printer would be working by then.
If it doesn't work, my plan is to print these stickers on normal paper and present them as mockups.

Stuck!

 I wrote the following text on Sunday evening, and that forgot to post it.

--

I need to present to a class tomorrow a brief I wrote myself about the subject  'is print dead?'

Here is a brief I have at the moment:

I believe print is the result of transferring information and thoughts from our minds into the real world. Therefore print is far from dead, it has evolved in such a way that today the digital print is used for growing number of purposes, whereas more traditional paper based printing is applied when it is most appropriate.

That is the reason why we see more and more beautiful uses for paper-based print.

I plan to demonstrate the relationship between digital and paper-based print. I will attempt to create one paper-based and one digitally printed object that will play to each medium's strength, and will show a clear connection to each other.

--

I really don't know what to do. The truth is that my mind is still on my last project, and despite the fact that I have been spending all week thinking about what to do I cannot come up with a single idea. seems I am stuck.  Last week in the briefing Amanda said that the truly hard part in a self initiated brief

is actually starting to work.  I must admit, I underestimated her words.

 so tomorrow I'm going to plead my case to the class, I'm going to show what I have done so far and hope for some helpful feedback.

 this was the only visual material I brought to class

The magnet samples

I had them laser cut yesterday.

Pretty neat!

Final crit for hidden treasures

I presented my work for about 5 minutes, Phil asked a few questions about who I spoke to regarding putting them up and then I pretty much got silence from the rest of the students...
When I think a work is really good I give feedback so that I feel like I contribute to the work - it's a way to curve my jealousy.

Does it mean they all hate it?

Behold - my vision

Here are some photos I am about to show at the final crit for this project.

After last time where I showed physical piece of work, I hope these visualisation going to be enough.

Yesterday I enquired about health and safety issues and the practicality of putting the letters up in the University. The person I spoke to said that this project is possible to carry out, and she initiated the procedure is to allow me to do so.

 the letters near the library

 the letters in the street