Studio Brief 1 - Production

To make the designs, I made initial sketches, then outlined the designs and finally coloured them in with pencils. This was to give them a more handmade aesthetic, with gentle shading that wasn't too 'digital'. I chose for the designs to be 10.5cm x 15.9cm, this was a measurement that many of the original cards used and I thought it would be most appropriate. Then the designs were scanned in and printed again so stronger stock could be used, several stocks were experimented with.

Several stocks were trialed. Two were variations of a light orange/yellow tone, this was to give the implciation of an aged look for the cards. However these meant that the colour of the designs were understated, they appeared too faded and weathered. Eventually thicker white card was chosen as the final stock in order to give the cards some vibrancy and strength.

Once printed the cards were cut using a craft knife, the corners needed to be curved to be authentic and smooth - playing to the sea theme. So I bought a corner puncher to achieve this.

Then the backs of the cards were painted with glue in order for the designs to be felt as well as seen. Once the glue had dried they were spray painted to be black, ideally making it easier for people to focus on the feel of the cards rather than what they can see on them. This links back to be research in fado and the fact that fado was usually played in near darkness in Portugal during the 1800s.