We made this short edit for our friends at LetterProeftuin for their new exhibition VUURWERK.

Vuurwerk, or Fireworks, is a collaborative project by the Dutch design group, LetterProeftuin (Jaron Korvinus, Timon van der Hijden, and Yorit Kluitman) and designer Lara de Greef.

Gafisch Atelier Den Bosch in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, a city located about halfway between Amsterdam and Antwerp, commissioned the group to create a new year’s gift “for their relations”. Based on the printing house tradition of producing a free calendars to celebrate a new year and showcase new printing techniques, the group decided to create a single print that would somehow change throughout the year. Because it could reflect the temperature changes of the seasons, thermal ink seemed like a logical fit. The group approached the European screen ink producer UNICO and proposed a sponsorship (btw, Unico makes great ink). Unico agreed to provide different color inks that would alter in transparency and opacity depending on temperature.

After two months of work the end result is an 8-layer screenprint including 4 thermal ink layers hand-printed in an edition of 600 prints. One print was pasted on an aluminium plate with integrated heating elements for the exhibition. The print was then wrapped in a blind blocking print made from laser cut shapes of wood.