The Problem

Make An Original Event Poster, Designed and Printed, in Three Days.

Screen printing is a process that involves a lot of prep time. Coated screens need to dry for a minimum of four hours. Paper has to be pre-racked for 24 hours in order to acclimate. Between each color, the ink has to fully dry before printing the next color. One false move with a screen and it might have to be cleaned, reclaimed, and recoated.

To make things easy on myself, I started with a found image: Ray Bolger as the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz. Being a fall show I decided to make him look extra creepy by hollowing out his eyes.

The second thing I did to expedite production was limit myself to just two colors. Less colors means less time printing.

Finally, I came up with a design that limited how those colors interacted with one another. The fine print was sometimes challenging to reproduce through the screens, but the way the black ink trapped the green ink left some room for error, limiting the chances for mistakes.

The print run was limited to 50 copies and first sold the night of the show. Sales were split between the venue and the artists, with the poster being nearly sold out in following the performances.