PRIMARY TOOLS & MATERIALS:
FIBERS, INKJET PRINTER

Additional Tools & Materials: scanner, Adobe Photoshop, tape, card stock, scissors, book page

This humble letter is a tribute to the Dutch designer Willem Sandberg. Sandberg was known for his use of common, everyday materials in printing, often using surfaces for printing and creating letters that others may consider trash. I chose to combine printing and fibers by printing this letter J - in the typeface Avenir Next - directly onto burlap.

Printing on burlap required me to tape the fabric onto a thick sheet of card stock, to ensure the page would smoothly feed into the printer. From my previous studies, I learned that this would also give me a bonus print made from the ink that bled through the burlap onto the card stock. Sure enough, a few of the printed Js left a faint, dotted mark on the paper after I peeled away the burlap. 

The other method I used for creating this letter was to print its outline backwards on the burlap, so I could cut it out as an isolated letter. To honor Sandberg's economical use of materials, I decided the dot of the J was unnecessary in this treatment. I also placed the J onto a background of more printed words - a nod to Sandberg's use of torn blocks of text in many of his designs. This outlined print onto the burlap also bled through to the cardstock, giving me a subtle, dotted letter shape.