I bought a Thermal printer before the start of the MA knowing I wanted to do something with it, but not sure what.
I had watched a talk via Small Fry Collective which included an illustrator called Nicholas Stevenson who used one to print instant small images.
Nicholas only talked a little about the printer during his talk, but I was really inspired by it so began to research purchasing one. You can buy professional thermal printers, as you would see in a store and many are set up and designed to print store receipts. The thing I found hardest when looking to purchase one was selecting one that could print my own image. I found a phone app in which you could set up to print your own images and then looked at a printer that would be supported to use alongside it.
-There are examples in my sketchbook of the printouts from these experiments.
-My developing ideas are to print out the WeFont, using different phrases so that users can have an instant printout of their ideas and conversations. These would be used in workshop settings and at my final degree show to add participation and interactivity.
-The only issue I did find with the images, is as the image is converted to dots to print, some of the lighter colours do not print, or show up so this needs to be considered.
-At present, the app I am using uploads an image to print from so it would be a little long winded to use this process at the moment and take an image from an editing software, upload it to this app to then print.
-If I cannot resolve these issues, I think to use the printer to print a set business card would be a great way to use this and add some participation to my MA Show.
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