Screenprinting poster & post card competition

We’re thrilled to announce an upcoming screenprinting workshop that will be held at Lure Design Inc. at the end of March. During this event students will have the opportunity to experience first hand the screenprinting process. We’re holding a contest open to all members of Valencia’s Graphic Design Group. (If you’re not a member you will have the opportunity to join.) For this competition we will be having students create a poster & postcard for Valencia’s upcoming student show. Here are the details of the competition:

DEADLINE: March 6, 2009 @9AM
POSTER SIZE: 11″ x 17″
POSTERCARD SIZE: 4″ x 6″
COLOR LIMITATIONS: 2 colors (one light color and one dark color)
REQUIRED INFORMATION THAT MUST BE ON BOTH THE POSTER & POSTCARD
(you may creatively summarize this information)

2009 Annual Juried Student Fine Art & Graphics Art Exhibition
Friday April 17, 2009 – The opening reception is from 6:30 – 9:30pm and the awards ceremony in the PAC is at 7:30pm on Valencia East Campus.
Exhibition Closing Date: Monday May 18.
VCC, AIGA & GDG logos must be present.

SUBMIT YOUR WORK: Submit a jpg comp of your work to the VCC Student Show Poster & Postcard group in flickr. In order to submit work you must join flickr (it’s free) and then join the group. We must approve you as a member to verify you’re a student at Valencia before you join the group – so go join NOW (and not on deadline day). If your work is selected we will contact you directly (through flickr mail) in order to obtain the print files.

DESIGN CONSTRAINTS
We’ve chosen to require a design constraint for this competition. The constraint: EGG. The Egg concept can be represented metaphorically or physically.

ANSWERING A FEW QUESTIONS
Just to address a few questions we anticipate arising…

WHAT TWO COLORS DO YOU WANT ME TO USE?
You choose – just be sure one is a light color and the other is dark. It’s suggested you use SOLID pantone colors ONLY.

CAN I USE DROP SHADOWS OR GRADIENTS?
NO. No drop shadows. No tints of colors. No opacity. No gradients. No bevel and emboss.

WHY CAN’T I USE DROP SHADOWS OR GRADIENTS, THEY’RE SUPER COOL?
Hopefully you’re joking…and though we’d love to rid the world from all the overused special effects used in design – we must emphasize the use of solid colors. In screenprinting ultimately we must print the films with a solid black color in order to properly burn the image onto the screens. Any tint of any other color than black and you risk not having your image burned onto the screen. If you use any of these special effects you risk having your work disqualified from the competition.

OKAY, WHAT’S UP WITH THE EGG IDEA?
You all can thank Kristy for her egg sandwich lunch. 🙂 Creative constraints are in place to help you think of less obvious ways to come to a design solution. Eggs can be fun…think of how many different ways an egg can be represented. You could think in terms of patterns, typographic respresentations, hidden eggs (like easter eggs), cracked, fried, we could go on…but we’ll let you creatively solve the problem. Tie together an egg into how we can promote the student show.

I’VE NEVER SCREENPRINTED BEFORE, DO YOU HAVE ANY OTHER SUGGESTIONS?
Again, use solid colors. Also, try to avoid super fine detail.

HOW MANY OF OUR POSTERS & POST CARDS ARE BEING PRINTED?
We will be selecting two final posters and 12-15 final post cards to be printed. Lure Design Inc. will be reviewing the final submissions and will assist us in determining the final projects to be printed at the workshop.

DO I HAVE TO DESIGN BOTH A POSTER AND POST CARD?
Yes! They should really be the same design – just at a smaller scale.

I’M SUPER INTERESTED IN THIS WORKSHOP, CAN YOU TELL ME MORE DETAILS?
Save the date: March 27th. We’ll be posting more details on the blog soon.

I’m sure you all might have additional questions – post them here and we’ll do our best to get them answered.