From London to Mexico and Back

Hello to all of our readers and a happy New Year! As you may have noticed we took a brief break from the world of Inspiring Print in December. Why I hear you ask? Well the answer is simple…we went to Mexico!

If you are considering taking a winter break in Mexico to get away from the grim weather of the UK then I strongly advise you give it a go. We took a long break in the wonderful Playa del Carmen where the clear skies got up to 30°C (over 10 times hotter than the day we said goodbye to Gatwick). The full review is definitely more suited for another type of blog so let’s talk about some design related stuff.

Whilst out there we took in as much of the culture as possible and seeing as the supposed end of the world was nigh, we decided to indulge in some Mayan-style history by visiting the two closest ruins to us which were Coba and Tulum.

These great structures were clearly devised by some intelligent people and commonly featured a prism form of some sort with a chamber at the top. Also there was a gigantic staircase to climb, located on one face of the building (which you are permitted to climb at Coba).

As well as learning about the local history we also adored some of the unexpected visual pleasures, one of which appears very touristy because of the shops we found them in, however, we liked it because of the Mexican people’s celebration of death:

In Mexico they celebrate Dia de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead) every year, which is a tradition linked with Catholicism that here in the UK we’d celebrate as All Saints’ Day. It is a way for those who have lost loved ones to remember them in a celebration that glorifies the life they had, which results in some beautiful artistic skulls such as those shown in the image above.

That’s just a little taster of things to come this month that glorify Mexico and its artistic beauty. If you’ve experienced it differently we’d love to hear from you in our comments below!

Proper BBQ by Tom Hayes

Crawling through Behance I decided to choose my new favourite London-based graphic designer for the first of a regular Friday feature I’m officially branding VisArt Friday where we will choose a favourite UK-based visual artist every week to share their work and why we like them. To kick off the first article in this brand new series we love the look of graphic designer Tom Hayes’ Proper BBQ branding.

There are several reasons as to why Proper BBQ has made its way into today’s VisArt Friday, one of which being the nostalgia you get, reminiscent of the stereotypical Old West, when looking at the font design and variety of textures it has been printed on.

Hayes has specifically targeted what he defined as “gentlemen” in his creative work and it has successfully captivated the men behind Inspiring Print. Perhaps it’s the masculinity associated with BBQs that has contributed to our undivided attention or maybe it’s the brilliant and simple design that we desire.

The mixture of metal, glass, twine and Hessian look and feel like very raw materials, which have been allowed to speak for themselves because of the very simplistic design approach utilising typography and border styles similar to the era they represent.

It is unclear whether or not these products are available to buy, as our online searches have been unsuccessful so far. One thing we’re certain of though is that these would be great sellers to BBQ blokes across the UK. It was only yesterday that BBC Radio 4 were discussing the stereotypes of men in the kitchen and that we’re more likely to buy ALL the gear involved with a cooking project because of our perfectionist nature compare to women who supposedly improvise.

Summary

Overall we massively enjoy the visual delights of Tom Hayes’ work here. The composition of the materials work nicely together with the simplistic design approach to create something that 21st Century cowboys of the barbeque world would be delighted to lasso off the shelf and into their kitchen cupboards.
To view Hayes’ Proper BBQ on Behance visit: http://www.behance.net/gallery/Proper-BBQ/3662161.

The History of Printing Techniques in Video

Print is an amazing thing that has evolved over centuries from its first recorded evidence at around 3500BC when engraved cylinders were used to make impressions onto clay through to our modern day digital printing techniques, which involve no manual labour whatsoever.

Seeing as print has such a long history and takes a massive amount of time to explain how each of the processes works, we’ve decided to create a collection of the best videos we could find that explain each of the printing processes in the simplest ways possible. We’ve also presented them in chronological order with the dates of when the techniques were first conceived so that you can visualise the evolution of printing from its humble beginnings to now.

Let us know what your favourite printing technique is in the comments section at the bottom of this article.

Woodblock Printing - Year: 200

Bookkake Woodblock Printing from stml on Vimeo.

Movable Type - Year: 1040

Upside Down, Left To Right: A Letterpress Film from Danny Cooke on Vimeo.

Printing Press - Year: 1454

Letterpress from Naomie Ross on Vimeo.

Etching - Year: 1500

Mezzotint - Year: 1642

Making the plates:

Printing:

Aquatint - Year: 1768

Lithography - Year: 1796

Die Kunst der Lithographie from Max Negrelli on Vimeo.

Rotary Printing - Year: 1843

Offset Printing - Year: 1875

Lithography from Richard Masland on Vimeo.

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Hectographic Printing - Year: 19th Century

Hot Metal Typesetting (Linotype) - Year: 1886

"Linotype: The Film" Official Trailer from Linotype: The Film on Vimeo.

Screen Printing - Year: 1907

Moleskine Silk Screen Printing from Moleskine ® on Vimeo.

Spirit Duplicator - Year: 1923

Dye Sublimination - Year: 1957

Laser Printing - Year: 1969

Thermal Printing - Year: 1972

Inkjet Printing - Year: 1976

3D Printing - Year: 1986

3D Printing: A Time-Lapse from Liz on Vimeo.

Digital Printing Press - Year: 1993

The dates of these different printing techniques have been sourced from Wikipedia’s article on The History of Printing which can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_printing.