Showing posts with label Alan Fletcher. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alan Fletcher. Show all posts

Friday 8 June 2018

Reconstruction

...just the cover makes the difference!

Here's an interesting project which is well worth a look, because of the interesting design concept and the way the cover is used to add to the quality and feel of the whole project.
 
This 48pp guide was produced to accompany an international touring exhibition called Reconstruction: Cultural Heritage and Making of Contemporary Fashion. This exhibition is touring around the world and is funded by the British Council.
Click on images to enlarge
Size of the publication is 210x130mm, portrait. The 48pp text is printed on a 130gsm printers "house silk" which, as you can see from the image below, is perfectly acceptable and the economical choice.
The cover however, is what really makes the difference to this publication. It is printed on ZETA, Linen, white 150gsm and I hope you'll be able to see the embossed linen texture in the image below...
Click on images to enlarge
The exhibition was designed by Pippa Nissen and design studio Kellenberger-White, who produced the literature. A really interesting aspect is that Kellenberger-White also developed a new typeface in response to the theme of the exhibition. The typeface is based on an observation by Alan Fletcher who spotted a modular grid on the reverse of a Russian Post Office envelope. Kellenberger-White drew a new alphabet originating from that grid, which was previously only drawn for numbers.
 
The grid is reproduced on the outside back cover of the catalogue....
...and of course the use of a linen embossed paper is perfectly in keeping with the "grid" concept and makes the catalogue look and feel very special.

Inside back spread:
 A very interesting project and you can read more here: http://kellenberger-white.com/project/reconstruction/

Creative directors at Kellenberger-White are Eva Kellenberger
and Sebastian White.
www.kellenberger-white.com
https://design.britishcouncil.org/projects/reconstruction/
Posted by Justin Hobson 08.06.2018

Wednesday 29 November 2017

To The Trains

Yesterday evening I was at the St Brides Foundation in London for the launch of a wonderful notebook titled "To the Trains". The project was a collaboration between design agency Carter Wong, printer Boss Print and us! This is the fourth notebook in the series, each one with a different and equally fascinating subject!

This edition showcases the tiles on display throughout the London underground system and the rich history that accompanies them.

The evening started with lashings of beer and wine and the opportunity to look at the images that are the subject of the book taken by photographer Josh Exell.
There was then an introduction to the project by Sarah Turner, Managing Director of Carter Wong followed by a short presentation of the influence of Leslie Green, who was appointed in 1903 to design over 50 stations for the underground and introduced a wayfinding system using symbols set in tiles. As you can see, there were over 150 people who attended....
The splendour of Green's original designs continues to excite and the tile work has been joined in more recent times, as refurbishment takes place, by prestigious artists and designers such as Abram Games, Alan Fletcher, Nicholas Munro and Eduardo Paolozzi.
...and here is the actual notebook that was the centre of attention. 
The wonderfully debossed cover is on a vinyl based cover material. Flexible, durable and just right for a notebook. There are a number of different cover/colour combinations available, this is the deep, burgundy red. Below shows the opening spread...
...a birds eye view showing the binding and the pages with the images of the tiles printed, which are "french folded"
The below image shows a spread of the notebook with the image page on the right - what you cannot see and is impossible to show/photograph is that the tiles are all beautifully and superbly embossed, so they are actually in relief - a truly amazing effect.
...I hope the image below shows just how three dimensional the result is.
Below are the tiles by Abram Games (Stockwell, 1969) where I hope you can see the french folding and the embossing.
As you can see from the above image, the book lies nice and flat - because it has been sewn and cold glued, so it lays beautifully flat. The paper used in the books is our Redeem 100% Recycled 80gsm for the text pages and our new Gardapat 13, Bianka 135gsm for the tile pages.

Printing is all offset litho. Embossing, binding and finishing is all by Boss print and it is all to an exceptionally high standard.

I had a small display, showing our ranges and printed examples and was kept busy all evening! Below I'm talking to Jason Maclaren from Cantate Communications.
A big thank you to Carter Wong, Boss Print and of course, our friends at the St Brides Foundation who made the event special as always.

http://www.carterwongdesign.com/
https://www.bossprint.com/
http://www.sbf.org.uk/
Posted by Justin Hobson on 29.11.2017

Friday 9 October 2015

Whatever happened to ....Marnix Zetteler?

It is with some regularity that I am asked "whatever happened to Marnix Zetteler"? ..so I thought I'd find out!

For those who don't remember or didn't know Marnix, he is the Dutch born paper-man who was a big noise in the 80's, 90's and beyond in the world of UK creative papers.

Originally he had a company called ISTD Fine Paper, a paper agency based in Reigate in Surrey. I first met Marnix in the mid 1980's and at that time he was agent for a coated paper mill in France called JOB, who made the paper range called Parilux.
Marnix was an unconventional paper agent as rather than selling to printers he took the paper range direct to designers, which while not totally unique, he promoted the paper using well designed collateral produced by highly rated designers of the day, such as Pocknell, Derek Birdsall, Trickett & Webb and Alan Fletcher to name a few.
Click on images to enlarge
Above shows the 'Print on Parilux' swatch. Creative direction by David Pocknell at Pocknell Studio, designer on the project was Jonathan Russell. A truly ground-breaking piece of paper promotion.

By the 1990's ISTD had a new identity (also Pocknell Studio I think?) and Marnix had added many other products to his portfolio, including from the USA Cranes Crest, Fox River and Monadnock. The image below shows a bound in insert from DesignWeek (back in the days when it was a printed publication) promoting Monadnock, which at the time was being stocked by a company called Modo Merchants (long since gone now!)
As the dawn of the millennium approached, ISTD morphed into a new company called VIP - The Very Interesting Paper Company Limited. This coincided with JOB Parilux mill being taken over by a German papermaker, Scheufelen and the Parilux papers were then handled by a mill owned agency.

Undaunted, Marnix began marketing his own products. the first of these was called Dutchman, a smooth uncoated paper range to compete with the American Text & Cover papers, such as Mohawk and our own Neptune Unique. Dutchman became quite a firm favourite with many designers.
He also created a range called Shoebox which many people still ask me about today. With characteristic flair, he took a low value board produced for the shoemaking industry and marketed it superbly.
This A6, wiro-bound production was designed by Trickett & Webb. Designer on the project was Heidi Lightfoot (who is now a partner at Together). Illustrations by Christopher Brown and all the illustrations are just reproduced in hot foil blocking - brilliant!
He produced a few promotional pieces with the late Alan Fletcher. Examples below produced to promote Monadnock, Confetti (Fox River), Shoebox and Dutchman. Printed by Gary Bird at Gavin Martin.
Click on images to enlarge
 ...and lastly he introduced a cheaper grade, uncoated offset paper called Hollander.
 ...by this time he had gone further afield for his graphic design using Andre Toet in Holland and also incorporating the now familiar 'Z' for Zetteler.
By the mid 2000's the paper market was changing, dominated by some large loss making conglomerates (PaperlinX, Antalis etc) and in 2004 Marnix 'retired' from the UK paper industry. He sold VIP to Jill Mannix (part of the GF Smith family) but it fizzled out in around 2007/8.

...and Marnix and his wife Sue sailed off into the sunset in Hawaii (Maui)! While there he grew 3,000+ palm trees from seeds on a derelict piece of land on West Maui which is now a palm forest. In his words "I had a dream to leave a positive footprint on the world and I managed to do it"

Whilst in Maui, rather than sitting and watching trees grow, Marnix acquired a new skill! He learned to restore old posters from Monsieur Alain Roger of Paris, who runs the conservation department of the French National Library and is highly regarded in the paper conservation business. After Hawaii, they moved to Okatie, South Carolina where Marnix established his own studio called 'La Feuilleraie' which restores and linen backs vintage posters.

...and here he is in the studio:
Image kindly supplied by Dude Magazine www.dudesc.com
Image kindly supplied by Dude Magazine www.dudesc.com
Marnix works a few hours in the studio every day. His challenges include removing folds in the paper and repairing any rips or tears it may have. To remove folds in the paper the poster is laid on a sheet of clear plastic and water is sprayed on it. The water helps the fibres in the poster to expand, removing the folds. This also cleans the poster, removing dirt and acids from the paper.
Image kindly supplied by Dude Magazine www.dudesc.com
Some posters need to be set in a special water bath to remove any extra acidic pollution in the paper before the rest of the process can continue. Others need to have pencil or pen marks removed. The reverse of the poster is coated with special glue which won’t harm the paper or replace the chemicals he just removed. The poster is laid on a linen frame and is then rollered to ensure it is flat and sticks to the linen backing. None of this is a particularly speedy process!

He has customers sending him restoration work from all over the world including London. He says in his email to me that he has many years work ahead already booked!
Image kindly supplied by Dude Magazine www.dudesc.com
I was fortunate to find an article on Poster Conservation and Preparation written about Marnix Zetteler in a locally published magazine called DUDE which is published by Brad McDonald. I emailed Brad and he kindly put me in touch with Marnix and gave me permission to use the photographs taken at 'La Feuilleraie'. Thanks Brad - DUDE is now truly global!


You can find DUDE magazine here: http://www.dudesc.com/
Click on this page to enlarge
and if you would like to read the magazine editorial, it is on page 40 of this PDF link.
http://www.dudesc.com/uploads/spring2012web_1_.pdf

I hope this article has been of interest, especially for those of you who may remember Marnix personally and this period in the industry.

Like many, I miss Marnix, occasionally bumping into him at events in London but to be honest, I don't miss him as a competitor! Enjoy life Marnix...

Posted by Justin Hobson 09.10.2015

Thursday 4 July 2013

Alan Fletcher Archive


© Martin Dunkerton 1992
If you aren't already aware of this, I think you'll find this pretty interesting. In the last month a new website archiving the work of Alan Fletcher has been put up. The site has been designed by Crescent Lodge and I asked Lynda Brockbank, the creative director to write a few words about the project:
 
The Alan Fletcher Archive website project began two years ago and was initiated by Alan’s daughter Raffaella with archivist Sarah Copplestone. The ‘soft’ launch on 31 May, was the moment when a rich mix of Alan’s work had been curated and digitised, important texts had been collected and commissioned, and the shop was ready to open. There’s still a vast collection, some of it unseen, that will continue to be added (some may yet be discovered), to build a living resource on Alan’s life, times and work. You can, of course, contact the Archive by email and also join the mailing list http://www.alanfletcherarchive.com/contact

The link to the new website is: http://www.alanfletcherarchive.com

Lynda remarked that it’s just wonderful to be able to look through all the amazing material in the archive and what a privilege it's been to work on the project.

...and I also have a small archive of my own! I have a set of ceramic desk accessories that Alan Fletcher designed for Time and Life in 1961 (bought in 2004 on the advice of a very sage Alan Dye from NB Studio ...thanks Alan)
 
...and I am the proud owner of a print that Alan gave me titled "a bouquet of flowers". I was at his studio one afternoon and had to rush off home as it was my anniversary that evening...
This new website is a brilliant resource and I look forward to seeing it grow and develop as more of the archive is uploaded.

http://www.alanfletcherarchive.com
http://www.crescentlodge.co.uk
Posted by Justin Hobson 04.07.2013

Friday 4 May 2012

Jobs from the past - Number 31

Regular followers of this blog will know that my first post of every month is a "job from the past" so that I can show some of the really good work from years gone by...

Ballpoint 
Exhibition Catalogue 2004

In 2004, Angus Hyland, a partner at Pentagram's London office, curated an exhibition celebrating 50 years of the Parker ballpoint jotter. Introduced in 1954, the Parker Jotter sold more than 150 million pens worldwide and was Parker's first ever ballpoint pen. Angus's aim was to explore and celebrate the artistic potential of the humble ballpoint pen. His inspiration came from a collection he had begun to make of the doodles and drawings made by his fellow Pentagram partners during their international meetings. A conversation with his wife, the illustrator Marion Deuchars, gave rise to the idea of an exhibition of artwork created using only ballpoint pens. The result was Ballpoint, a collection of works by over 50 fellow creatives from around the world.
I remember that I went along to Pentagram for a meeting with Angus together with Gary Bird from Gavin Martin. Angus briefed us about the project as a whole and the exhibition catalogue in particular. He showed us some of the submitted exhibits including the school desk (see below) which illustrator Billie Jean had submitted - not just a photograph, Billie went out and bought a desk, illustrated it and sent the whole desk to Pentagram - how cool is that!

A spread showing work by Ian Wright and Billie Jean.
The brief was to produce something that had the actual look and feel of a sketchbook rather than something that just reproduced the images. He didn't want a pastiche, just something that felt realistic ...and of course a solution that was also affordable. After discussing pagination and economical formats with Gary, the result is a book of 235x300mm, portrait, saddle stitched. The 72pp text was printed on our Redeem 100% Recycled 130gsm, which has the utilitarian feel but which would reproduce some of the more demanding images really well. The cover is Idaho Blu Sky 275gsm, which has an "excercise book feel" and colour and which worked really well with the blue binding tape that went down the spine. The tape is also used to create a pen holder - there is a full flap on the inside back cover which is glued  down allowing a slot with the loop of tape which cleverly holds the pen.

A spread showing a detail from Roderick Mills’ “The skies are full, 101 aircraft, 101 pens (no.2).”
Work by Angus Hyland and Marion Deuchars.
Invitation to the private view:
Images from the exhibition:

I wasn't sure how I could pick one or two people to highlight in this piece, so I've listed all the contributors here:
Ceri Amphlett, Lorenzo Apicella, Ron Arad, Alan Baker, James Biber, Nicholas Blechman, Anthony Burrill, Margaret Calvert, Nina Chakrabarti, Paul Davis, Mike Dempsey, Ryan Denton, Marion Deuchars, Stephen Doyle, Daniel Eatock, Jonathan Ellery, Sara Fanelli, Alan Fletcher, Jeff Fisher, Jason Ford, Tom Gauld, Michael Gillette, Fernando Gutiérrez, George Hardie, Thomas Heatherwick Studio, Julian House, Sharon Hwang, Angus Hyland, Benoit Jacques, Billie Jean, Kerr Noble, David Lancashire, Uwe Loesch, Ross Lovegrove, Fernando Medina, Abbott Miller, Roderick Mills, Flavio Morais, Christoph Niemann, Woody Pirtle, Shonagh Rae, Lucinda Rogers, Paula Scher, Sophie Smallhorn, Leonardo Sonnoli, DJ Stout, Adrian Taylor, Patrick Thomas, Peter Till, Aude Van Ryn, Ian Wright.

From my point of view, it was a great project to be involved with. It won  many awards including the 2005 DesignWeek Award for Promotional Brochures, the Best in Book Creative Review Annual 2005 and the main award in the Books and Exhibition Catalogues category at the 23rd International Biennial of Graphic Design in Brno in 2008 and probably many other awards I'm not aware of!

A particularly lovely touch (especially from my point of view) is the beautiful way in which our business cards were illustrated on the credits page:



Art direction is by Angus Hyland with artwork by Marion Deuchars. Designer on the project was Charlie Hanson. Charlie has since established her own studio together with Jessie Earle called Studio 10½. The exhibition was co-curated by Steven Bateman, PR and gallery coordinator at Pentagaram, he is now an established and revered wordsmith.

It was beautifully printed and finished by Gavin Martin in London.

If you've got a copy, you're lucky as it's an absolute gem!

http://www.parkerpen.com/
www.pentagram.co.uk
http://mariondeuchars.com/
www.tenandahalf.net
Steven Bateman: http://www.26.org.uk/members.asp?ID=3442
www.gavinmartincolournet.co.uk
Posted by Justin Hobson 04.05.2012