Printing concertina's

when printing off my concertina at a small size to give me a more realistic idea of what it would look like, i like how the portrait on the front has a border, and think this needs to be present around the collage to tie the both sides together and keep it consistent. i like the idea that having a boarder frames the 'story'. 

i played around for ages on photoshop making sure the front and back of the concertina were aligned - this required me to alter the Hight (portrait) of the collage to fit onto the 200mm H x 800mm W concertina format for it to leave an equal width boarder that also matched the boarder around the portrait on the front of the concertina.

as the couples concertina was 1040mm wide, if i wanted each section to fold down to 200mmx260mm i would have to print on a a0 piece of paper. 

above is all the concertinas on an a0 piece of paper ready to print. 

Problems when printing:

• to start with i wasn't able to print the concertina out at A2 as any larger cannot print double sided.  - this was annoying as i worried the hand written text even illustrations would be too small to have a impact of understand. 

• As i had aligned the 2 sides of the concetina on one photoshop file it allowed me (james -Digital print technician) to hide and choose which layers to print at a time but make sure they stay in the same postition. unfortunatly one of the texted layers that  was for the outside of the concertina only was not hidden when printing the collage side of my concertina.  however, though this was a cost, it allowed me to practice cutting down and folding my concertina before the final ones were printed.  

                          

• some how the alignment was off!! this was really really annoying as i have spend so long fiddling and ,making sure they were aligned (even printing out small mock ups myself several times to make sure!) 
• TIME MANAGEMENT - luckily, i booked a back up print slot 3 days before the deadline incase i came across any mishaps like this. however, after speaking to Fred, these concertinas are essentially just mock-ups as i proposed concertinas that would be larger than what they have been printed out at anyways, so re-printing may not be necessary if i do not have enough time to sort out the files, as long as the concept and context i am proposing is clear. 

• because the paint the concertinas were printed out on wasn't entirely straight and aligned with what was printed this make it difficult to cut - using the guillotine.

i realised after a few attempts the guillotine was more hassle then it was worth so used a scalpel and ruler - this was more tricky as the pieces were very long and mistake were easily made but at-least it cut the exact shape of the concertina out. 

• folding the concertina. - as the size of them were no longer what i planed (200mmx200mm and 260mm x 200mm) the folding point had also changed so i had to work out the measurements of each fold. somehow i still managed to get one square longer then the other whihc made the folded concertina not accurate and equal.
• using the machine that indents the paper was really helpful but took a while to understand and get right - measurments again.. however if i print the concertinas out again i will be able to learn from all these mistake and print and fold them perfectly! (lets hope i haven't spoke to soon)