Bold lines and Vibrant color

Bold lines and vibrant color, most every piece of art and design that I love usually has one, or both, of these elements. It is no wonder why I am so drawn to graphic design and in particular, logos.

One cannot discuss corporate identity and design without mentioning Raymond Loewy. (raymondloewy.com)  Although considered the father of industrial design, Raymond Loewy, to me, best signifies a man who understood the importance of color and line.  His logos include Shell, Chubb, Exxon, and the US Postal Service. His designs exhibit bold color and shapes with little to no outline. In as few graphic expressions as possible he manages to get the point across.





Raymond Loewy - 1955

Much is the same for modern graphic tees, or t-shirts. These shirts are printed by a method called ‘screen printing’. In this process of printing, ink is pushed through a screen that has been turned into a stencil by light sensitive emulsion. There is usually one screen for each color in the design.  The limitations of this process force the designer to create images that are simple and bold with strong lines and colors.

Nice Ts bro!





Deer Antlers - FullSpectrumApparel

Although screen printing as a process is not particularly difficult to learn, it can be time consuming and costly. It also does not scale well and can cause space issues when trying to print on large and small items. For the simple analog lover like myself an alternative would be for a miniaturized method of screen printing that allows the user to apply their design to smaller more common items.  

Enter Gocco by Riso.

Gocco Printing

The Gocco machine is a small personal screen printing machine that allows you to design and print your own greeting cards and other small things. It is quite cool in that you can barrier off separate colors and have clear and bold multi-color designs. The screens are made using any image you can draw or print in black and white. For printing clean bold designs on objects it cannot be beat. The feel produced by this product lends itself to a wide variety of stationary applications. So far my favorite have been the notebooks on easy. The notebooks on easy come in almost any size and color, not to mention material, you are looking for. If you love to sketch or just keep notes handy the analog way, there is nothing better then a sweet custom one-off notebook. 




Mountian Notebook - LittleAlexander, etsy
Click here!

I think that the type of art that Chris Bourke (chrisbourkeart.com) and Michael Sieben (msieben.com) produce are meant for the screen. I would love to see some of these designs come across on bright colored Moleskin notebooks.

Chris Bourke - Heart Waves,

What is unfortunate is that the Rico Corp. ceased production in 2008 of the Gocco machine. While they will continue to produce inks and other products in support of the little screen printers, the machines themselves are getting harder and harder to find.

 Most machines today are in excess of $200. That is a pretty steep start-up cost just to print some cool looking cards and notebooks. Luckly for us there is the YuDu series of printers. These printers are very similar to the Gocco printers but start on a larger scale. The primary YuDu kit is marketed towards individuals looking to print their own custom t-shirts. There is a YuDu Cardshop version that is super reasonable at $12 to $14 for the start-up kit. The only drawback of the Cardshop is that the screens come pre 'burnt' with a design. But, it is easy enough to remove the existing emulsion and re-burn the screen using the proprietary emulsion sheets. There is a way to save money on the very expensive and difficult to use emulsion sheets by recoating your existing screens yourself. This cuts cost by $9 per screen. I am not aware of any method to recoat the smaller Cardshop screens other then the YuDu sheet, although I'm sure it can be done. 

  

YuDu Cardshop

If you feel like some hand made items with a unique and professional feel will fit the occasion, or if you just want to learn the basics of screen printing, you cannot go wrong with the YuDu Cardshop. It is affordable and allows for growth and experience. Once you get the basics down you can step up to the custom relm of screening and design your own using the vintage Rico Gocco machine - the Godfather of small scale screen printing.