Grill Print Press

Date - 2013 | Disciplines - Graphic Design, Art Direction | Tools - Illustrator | Team - Kimberly Mar, Elijah Zapien

Problem

As part of a creative brief assigned by my college design program, a team of designers including myself were asked to explore and create an inkless printing process.  After some research and field testing my team and I decided to design a custom bbq grill we could use to smoke our design into paper with.

Role & Process

I was responsible for drawing our design by hand and giving it to my team to be digitally vectored. Once the lettering was re-touched and pixel perfect, we commissioned a local steel shop to hydrocut our vector design from a single sheet of steel. The finished grill was able to lay precisely atop a portable bbq grill.

We conducted multiple paper tests to discover which papers would yield the cleanest transfer of the design without catching fire in the process. After a couple days of testing, we found cardstock paper that was large and thick enough to create the desired transfer.

Finally, we took the custom grill and placed it over a round bbq grill and filled it with charcoal.  Adding lighter fluid, we ignited the charcoal, and held our cardstock over the grill, until the design was transferred.

Results

Our grill was able to successfully produce fifty prints of our design with one bbq. The custom grill can also double as one-of-kind piece, suitable for any home decor.