Edition of 30, Budget of One
A Unit 2 class is producing a collaborative zine for a local community centre. The brief: 30 copies, A5, 16 pages, printed in two colours, delivered in three weeks. The class has $180 materials budget and access to a school photocopier (5c per black page, 25c per colour page) plus a borrowed screen-printing kit that can print one colour per pass and needs 24 hours drying between passes. One student, Marco, wants to use photographic halftones; another, Leah, wants hand-drawn line work; a third wants a die-cut cover. The community centre has asked that the zine be 'something people keep'. Attendance is uneven: roughly 14 students attend reliably, 6 sporadically.
1. Test the photocopier route against the budget and the brief. Show the arithmetic and state what it rules in and out.
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16 pages × 30 copies = 480 page-impressions per colour pass. If all pages were colour at 25c: 480 × $0.25 = $120 per pass. Two colour passes would be $240 - over budget before any paper, and the brief's 'two colours' does not mean two full colour passes on every page. Black-only at 5c: 480 × $0.05 = $24 for a single-sided run. A realistic mixed plan - say 12 black pages and 4 colour pages per copy - costs (12 × 30 × $0.05) + (4 × 30 × $0.25) = $18 + $30 = $48, leaving about $130 for paper, binding and cover stock. So the photocopier rules in halftones and line work equally (both reproduce), rules in a colour accent section, and effectively rules out a full-colour 16-page zine. The die-cut cover is not a printing cost but a finishing cost - it needs a die, which the budget almost certainly cannot absorb, so it should be replaced by a hand-cut or scored cover. A strong answer separates printing from finishing and shows the arithmetic rather than asserting 'too expensive'.
2. Compare the screen-printing route with photocopying for this class, given the drying constraint and uneven attendance.
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Screen printing: two colour passes with 24 hours between means the whole edition must be printed, dried, then printed again. For 30 copies of 16 pages that is 480 sheets per pass - a large drying area and a tight schedule across three weeks. It is feasible only if the class prints in one or two concentrated sessions and has flat space to dry 480 sheets. Photocopying has no drying time and can be done in short bursts by whoever is present, which suits 14 reliable and 6 sporadic students far better. Screen printing's advantage is tactile quality and a handmade register that supports 'something people keep'; photocopying's advantage is resilience to erratic labour and a predictable cost. The honest recommendation is hybrid: photocopy the interior (fast, cheap, attendance-proof) and screen-print a single-colour cover in one pass (no drying gap, high perceived value, uses the borrowed kit meaningfully). A strong answer links each method's properties to the specific constraint - time, labour reliability, budget - rather than ranking methods in the abstract.
3. Marco's halftones and Leah's line work may not coexist. Advise the class on resolving this without simply outvoting one student.
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The conflict is not personal taste but a mismatch of visual language: halftone dots are tonal and soft-edged, hand-drawn lines are crisp and contour-based. On a photocopier at A5, fine halftones risk moiré and muddy greys, while thin lines risk dropping out. A resolution should be a design rule, not a vote. Options: assign halftones to full-page image pages and line work to text or border zones, so each dominates different spreads; or impose a unifying constraint - everything printed at one size, one colour, on the same stock - so the contrast reads as intentional juxtaposition. The class should also test: print one spread each way on the actual copier and judge from the print, not the screen. A strong answer identifies the technical risk (reproduction at small scale), proposes a structural rule that lets both students' work survive, and justifies it by the brief's 'something people keep' - coherence supports keeping. Outvoting Marco would solve the friction and lose a strength.