Mounts Bay Work Experience 2019
Hi!
I’m Rey, a year 10 student at Mounts Bay Academy. For the past week, I’ve spent time at Fishboy PZ with Mat and Izzy to learn about screen printing, designing and how they run their shop. It’s been a really interesting week and I think it’s been great to find out more about how shops are run behind the scenes.
I applied to Fishboy for my work experience placement because I love to draw and I have experience with printing and design already- last year, I passed my graphics GCSE in MBA’s fast track GCSE course. I felt that going to somewhere like Fishboy would be really useful to expand my knowledge of graphic design and printing, as even though it’s not something I think I want to go into full time in the future, if I can build up relevant skills that I can use in a temporary job, like how to talk to customers, the basics of invoicing and adding products to a retail website.
On Monday, Mat showed me how the heat conveyor belt works. This is a belt that moves t-shirts, bags, hoodies and other printed clothing or items. When they have been screen printed, they are put onto the belt and go through the heated tunnel part 4-6 times before being left to cool and cure. I helped out with this by moving the shirts along the conveyor belt, removing them and folding them while Mat printed.
I was on a school trip on Tuesday so wasn’t in work experience, but when I got back on Wednesday I had a go at creating my own design for a print. I used Men-an-Tol as inspiration for the design as I hadn’t seen a shirt based on it in the shop before. I did a variety of sketches before settling on the design below:
Sketch of the final design 
The inked final design
I decided on that design because it was simple but not boring to look at. Even though it’s not as good as a lot of the other prints and designs, I’m happy with it. Mat then scanned it into the computer and using photoshop I blocked in the lines with black. This is so that when it becomes a screen to print with, the lines are thick enough to see details.
On Thursday, I helped out in the shop with Izzy, who showed me how to add products onto the Fishboy website and their page on Trouva. Something I hadn’t thought about was the fact that on Trouva, you cannot have models wearing the clothes: it needs to just be an image of the item of clothing on a plain background. This meant that to upload a product on Trouva, we had to photoshop the background of a picture of one of the Mount t-shirts before putting it on the website.
I also learned how to log sales in the day book, how to write a receipt, how to use the card machine and how to fold clothes into the tissue paper when they are bought. I thought these were all really useful things to know how to do, as they are transferrable skills that I can use if I were to get a job in retail.
Today, Friday, I’ve mostly worked downstairs in the shop updating some products on the website and helping with customers (and writing this!). This afternoon, I’m learning more about screen printing in the studio with Mat, as I haven’t printed here yet.
Thank you so much Izzy and Mat, it’s been so good to meet you and great to spend the week with you learning about how you run your shop. Thank you! 😀
