M. Finley Designs

So far this summer has been pretty laid back, but I have been keeping myself pretty busy screen printing. In the past month I began exploring a new subject matter in my screen prints— ampersands. I first became interested in ampersands as a typographic form after reading The History of the Ampersand. Shortly after reading this I started filling page after page of my sketchbook with ampersands in varying shapes and styles. In these drawings began my interest in the visual construction of the symbol. So I decided to make ampersands the subject of my senior design project.

Every good project starts with goals and limitations

In this project I will create multiple ampersand designs from both sketches and digital sources. I will then screen print them onto 5×7 cards, and compile the prints into a box book. This means designing all of the actual prints, and the box which will hold them, to work as a single unit. In order to do this right, I first need to answer some important questions, and start asking questions for further research.

• How many box books should I make? More importantly, how many can I afford to make? I would like to set a goal of twenty, but I will have to research materials and construction methods.
• How many ampersands should I design and print? I would like to set a goal of fifty, but it depends on what kind of paper I can find. I should probably look into an affordable cover weight paper.
• How should I limit my colors and layers? I would like each print to consist of two layers of the same transparent color. I am thinking of using just three colors, although I don’t yet know what colors.