As a recent graduate from the University of Utah, enterprising young designer Michael Joseph Croxton decided that what he really needed to celebrate the occasion was a limited edition poster. And not just one poster, but two. It helps to have friends in high places, or at least in print shops. Michael explains:
I collect show posters and love the print making process, so I thought a poster that could be treated as an art print would be a great solution. I have a good friend who does letterpress printing and talked him into printing for me. I really wanted to embrace the quirks of the printing process and break some of its rules i.e. using large fields of color, double hits of the same color to make a different one, and reversing type out of blocks of color.
I chose to use some vintage engravings because it spoke to the history of printing, but also because the images could be related to the idea of graduating and moving forward in life. The fish breaking away from the school, and the bird spreading its wings.
The lino block that was used for the background field ended up being warped and would not print evenly, which I ended up really liking. It gave the poster a lot of texture and a nice etherial quality. The background and the actual image are printed with the same color, thus saving us from the need to clean the press. Since the background is such s large field and doesn’t take the ink evenly when the bird and fish images were printed they came in clean and relatively opaque.
Editor of FPO and co-founder of UnderConsideration LLC.
More: Online / On Twitter
FPO (For Print Only), is a division of UnderConsideration, celebrating the reality that print is not dead by showcasing the most compelling printed projects.
FPO uses Fonts.com to render Siseriff and Avenir Next.
FPO is run with Six Apart’s MovableType
All comments, ideas and thoughts on FPO are property of their authors; reproduction without the author’s or FPO’s permission is strictly prohibited
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UnderConsideration is a graphic design firm generating its own projects, initiatives, and content while taking on limited client work. Run by Bryony Gomez-Palacio and Armin Vit in Bloomington, IN. More…
blogs we publish
Brand New / Displaying opinions and focusing solely on corporate and brand identity work.
Art of the Menu / Cataloguing the underrated creativity of menus from around the world.
Quipsologies / Chronicling the most curious, creative, and notable projects, stories, and events of the graphic design industry on a daily basis.
products we sell
Flaunt: Designing effective, compelling and memorable portfolios of creative work.
Brand New Conference videos / Individual, downloadable videos of every presentation since 2010.
Prints / A variety of posters, the majority from our AIforGA series.
Other / Various one-off products.
events we organize
Brand New Conference / A two-day event on corporate and brand identity with some of today's most active and influential practitioners from around the world.
Brand Nieuwe Conference / Ditto but in Amsterdam.
Austin Initiative for Graphic Awesomeness / A speaker series in Austin, TX, featuring some of the graphic design industry's most awesome people.
also
Favorite Things we've Made / In our capacity as graphic designers.
Projects we've Concluded / Long- and short-lived efforts.
UCllc News / Updates on what's going at the corporate level of UnderConsideration.
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