VISITING PROFESSIONAL//DITTO PRESS TALK//OUGD602

ditto press
Today Ben from Ditto Press came in to talk to us about his work and studio, which I found to be really interesting and engaging, especially because the work shown is exactly the kind of work I would like to be involved with post uni.  Ben spoke about a lot of interesting projects he's done and how he started out and got involved with graphic design.  I think for one of the publications I'm making this year it would be really beneficial to use ditto's printing facilities, I want to look into what could be the best options for either my contemporary culture zines to be printed there or my personal manifesto.

about ditto press:

Ditto Press is an independent publishing house and printing company based in London, specialising in the arts and creative print.

PUBLISHING
Our publishing schedule covers artists books and literary work. 

PRINTING
The UK's first and largest Risograph printers, stencil printing remains our specialism and we have a great reputation for precision and attention to detail. Additionally we offer a large range of creative print and print-design services. 

Ditto is owned and staffed by designers and artists, so we're no strangers to odd requests. We do our best to help out whatever your intentions, so feel free to give us a call or send us an email.

brief

Ben also set a research based brief:

Think of a way to collect/archive/ display your research.  There is no point in research if it doesn't lead to a useful outcome.  Everybody works in a different way, we want you to find a methodology that works for you.  For example: a hard drive full of weird photos off the internet is an asset, not an incidental factor.  Find a way to celebrate it, present it and make it work for you.

books from ditto

Something that I feel I've not explored as much as I should of whilst being on the course is printing and finishing techniques.  This is something I'm actually quite interested in as I really like print and feel exploring these areas further could be really beneficial to my practice.  Whilst doing some research and actually feeling the variations of stock and finishes available its inspired me to try and do some of these things for some of my final outcomes.  Things such as laser cutting certain areas of a front cover or embossing and binding techniques are all worth exploring for briefs such as 'the collected writings of Rosy Lee,' contemporary culture and the personal manifesto.

Hard back binding could be a nice finish for the collected writings of Rosy Lee.

Really like this printing, the colour and visual texture, this is the kind of printing I would quite like to try for the collaging on my personal manifesto.

I like the layout of this and I think I could use this to inspire my direction in the Unsung heroes/heroines brief.  Since third year I've been quite keen to try using handwriting scanned in as part of a design, I think this hand rendered approach contrasting with set digital typefaces looks really nice together.  I also think a hand written design would work as its more evocative of emotion and is far more personal which, I feel, is quite an important aspect of the brief.

Whilst becoming increasingly interested in zines this year I have also noticed that a lot of hand rendered type is included in certain styles of zines which I think makes more of an impact.  Im eager to try hand rendered type laid over some photography for my personal manifesto brief as I feel this would communicate me personally and as a designer.

This could be a potential way of displaying some of my research for the brief that has just been set.  My basic idea at the moment, based purely on initial thoughts, is to research conversation/language/words etc.  This could be an interesting way of documenting, recording time and place of conversation and displayed exactly how the words were spoken.  Photographs of places where the conversations took place could be interesting as different areas would result in different dialect being spoken and different topics being addressed.