Research
We all took some money with us so we could sample different things from the places we visited. Luckily for us, it was a cold windy day and there were many people flocking to bakeries for somewhere warm to eat, which gave us a perfect opportunity to find our demographic. We did some online research first, finding out how many Greggs there were in Leeds (over 15) and which of those Greggs to visit.
The first few Greggs we visited were inside Merrion shopping centre, these were generally busier than the others we visited later on. Serving only as takeaway shops, with no seating. We couldn't take pictures in these ones. So i did some observational drawings, mostly on what their christmas products were like. The assistants in these shops were very hesitant to talk to us and the customers were too busy. We slowly made our way down and decided to visit the Greggs down in Leeds Market. The woman there was more talkative and said how that particular shop was very locally driven with many of the market owners coming there for a quick snack. I took lots of pictures of the architecture around the Greggs as the shop itself was very burger-van-esque.
The Greggs that was the most helpful was the one on the main street, we all sat down in there and observed. I drew many observations of how people ate their food and for some time I thought thats what I might do for my pages. We found out that that Greggs had a recurring customer base, with a lot of elderly people coming in for the deals that they felt were good and many we spoke to were nostalgic of times past and felt that Greggs was one of the only shops they could trust. We also found out that Amy in our team hadn't tried a mince pie before so we photographed her first mince pie experience and immediately decided that had to be a page.
We decided to visit another Bakery to see whether there was a difference in tone of voice and to compare it to Greggs. When we visited The Smoothie Company outside of College we found that the owner was more talkative and more passionate about his company. He told us an insight into his company and about Gail who was the lady who baked the food. This visit definitely changed where we were going with the book. Initially we were keeping it focused on just Greggs and finding out something interesting about it but we realised that people's lives had a lot to do with both companies and that that should be something strongly featured in the book.
Initial ideas and decisions
When we got back we had decisions to be made, I doodled a small map of Leeds and where we had been and then it got decided that it would be the front cover for the book. The rest of the book was divided up between the other 4 members of the team. We decided that it should be strongly person lead so we all discussed our favourite parts of the day and who made the most impact on us. Once it was decided we all set to making our pages. I designed the map a few times, making it more of a fun map than an accurate one as it was too hard to fit the whole of leeds accurately onto the paper. After a few attempts, I finally designed one on A4 I was pleased with, then I shrunk it down to A6 (by accident) and then A5 eventually. Once I had seen what it looked like scanned in and resized we all discussed whether it would work with the screenprinting process. Most of us had had very little experience with screenprinting, I had tried it a few times and knew that it would be hard to screen print such a detailed drawing. With this in mind, we all decided that we wanted to go ahead with it.
After this I started redrawing it onto the special paper using a lightbox. I had never used a lightbox before but since this have used it loads, it helped alot with the accuracy for some of the smaller more delicate patterns. Because we were screen printing we needed two sets of special paper so that there would be two colours, at this point we hadn't decided on colours but had thought about using Greggs colours of a blue and orange. I decided to make the vast majority of the picture on the first piece of special paper so it would come out using the dark colour and used the second piece of special paper to show all the tones and patterns of the roofs to break it up abit. We also decided on a name together as a group, Chay suggested half a bakers dozen but when we googled it, it turns out we only had enough pages to be almost half a bakers dozen. It became a running joke so we ended up naming our small book "Almost 1/2 a bakers dozen".
After we had all redrawn our designs onto the special paper we then were ready to screenprint. We took our papers and were introduced into the workshop. We were shown how to use the slides and how to put our designs onto them. Whilst we waited for it to dry, we mixed colours and were taught about how to do it independently something which will come in handy in the future. We mixed a sky blue and an orangey yellow (although this later came out as just yellow it was still nice). Then we got to screenprint and it was really interesting. I really enjoyed it and was impressed by how far the ink went, we made enough so each of us had at least 2 copies of the book. It was mostly fault free although the second time we were screenprinting the screen was not completely dry so when we pressed down the ink smudged really badly. Although it was a minor disaster I think it was important it happened so we could be taught how to fix it ourselves in the future. Afterwards we were shown how to wash down the screen so it could be used again and shown all of the various equipments needed to do so.
Our end result was really nice, although the colour was not exactly what we had planned it ended up working out nicely. The two tone colours worked very well and was something very simple. I had never made hotdog books before so it was a good skill gained as I have since made more, they are fast and easy to make which makes them great for small promotional books. I loved screenprinting and whilst we were in there we got to see some other peoples screens from other years, these were especially nice and showed us the real breadth of what screenprinting can achieve.
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