ISTD 90 Invitations

Founded in London in 1928, the ISTD turned 90 this summer. The Society has always been run on a voluntary basis and in June they organised a special celebration to recognise the huge contribution made over the years by board and committee members past and present.

The wonderfully substantial A5 invitations are hot foil blocked on our SUMO black 2mm thick board.

The invitations are simply hot foil blocked in metallic silver foil on both sides.

Click on images to enlarge

Below is an image of the blocks used for the hot foiling

Hosted at the iconic De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill on Sea, the event was an informal evening of friends, food and typographic fun provided by Andy Altmann, of Why Not Associates who gave a very amusing talk about the influence of seaside town humour and typography within his work  

As you can see from the image above, 2mm thick is really thick!

Playne Design executed the 90th anniversary identity, designer on the project was David Coates. The invitation was hot foil blocked by Pureprint, who have only just brought pre-press services such as hot foiling and UV varnishing in house.

https://www.istd.org.uk/
https://playnedesign.co.uk/
https://www.pureprint.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 20.11.2018 

ISTD 90th Anniversary

Yesterday evening I was lucky enough to be invited to the 90th anniversary celebration International Society of Typographic Designers (ISTD) awards held at the wonderful De La Warr pavilion in Bexhill on Sea, East Sussex. It was a wonderful evening at this amazing location.

The De La Warr pavilion is a modernist building by the architects Erich Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff which opened in 1936. The enlightened town council opened this new space which was to provide culture and entertainment for the masses – a true people‘s palace.

The evening started with drinks on the rooftop terrace, which was delightful as it was a beautiful evening.

The anniversary dinner was held in the dining area on the second floor, where over a hundred members and guests gathered, including some members coming from as far as Canada.

The wonderful restaurant area has the most amazing panoramic windows looking out to sea, a really perfect backdrop.

The evening began with an introduction by Jonathan Doney, the Chair of ISTD who gave a brief re-cap of the society's history, founded 90 years ago by Vincent Steer who brought together six other like-minded colleagues, for the first meeting of the British Typographers Guild, held at an Italian restaurant in Holborn, London. Jonathan reminded us of the work of the ISTD, including the Student awards which has been running for 45 years and now with programmes in six countries!

After dinner, Andy Altmann, one of the co-founders of Why Not Associates gave a very amusing talk about the influences on his career from the humble Ladybird books, his scrapbooks, to Eric Gill and Why Not's early life as a studio in Soho, shortly after leaving the RCA.

A very special moment in the evening was the award made to Freda Sack (pictured below). Freda was made an Honorary Fellow of the ISTD in recognition of her significant contribution to the Society and the typographic industry. Freda has been a member for over 30 years and has held pretty much every position on the board. Freda managed to achieve this while also running her own successful business.

It was an excellent evening which demonstrated real warmth and friendliness which the world of typography appears to engender. 

 It is so important for the design industry that we nurture and retain organisations such as the ISTD and we must take every opportunity to try and encourage membership, thus ensuring their continued viability. ...and if you aren't a member, have a look http://www.istd.org.uk/- it costs less than £10 per month - which is excellent value! 

Congratulations to the ISTD Board and the events team for arranging an excellent 90th Anniversary -- a huge amount of time and work goes into these events and it is fair that they should be recognised and applauded. 

www.istd.org.uk 

www.dlwp.com 

Posted by Justin Hobson 29.06.2018

ISTD Awards 2014

On Friday evening I was lucky enough to be at the International Society of Typographic Designers (ISTD) awards held at the wonderful De La Warr pavilion in Bexhill on Sea. It was a wonderful evening at this amazing location. The De La Warr pavilion is a modernist building by the architects Erich Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff which opened in 1936. The enlightened town council opened this new space which was to provide culture and entertainment for the masses – a people‘s palace.

Following renovation in 2005, the pavilion hosts many shows, exhibitions and cultural events. On Saturday their new Magnum exhibition just opened:  http://www.dlwp.com/event/magnum-photos-one-archive-three-views

The evening started with drinks on the rooftop terrace, which was delightful as it was a beautiful evening.

Stewart Drew

We were welcomed by Stewart Drew, Director and CEO of the De La Warr Pavilion, who explained why they were so pleased to be part of the ISTD awards and to have an association with the society - they also hosted the judging in June.

As with all ISTD events, there is a real warmth and friendliness, which may be because of the international dimension or maybe the society just attracts the nice people in the world!

The dinner and awards was held in the wonderful restaurant with the panoramic windows looking out to sea.

These international awards attracted entries from 25 countries across a wide range of graphic design disciplines. In total there were 84 certificates of excellence and 20 premier awards made - awarded for outstanding typographic achievement. Although, not everyone could make it the awards, there were many people who had travelled long distances, including Wing Lau from Australia and Astrid Stavro together with Pablo Martin from Design by Atlas in Spain, who left laden with awards!

Bryan Edmondson from Sea, collecting a Premier Award (for Pencil to Pixel/Monotype exhibition) 

Andy Altmann (Why Not Assoc)

This year was the highest number of awards made, but this reflected the far higher number of entries. For the first time the Overall Winner was a joint award, going to MM Koehn for a book titled Eros Und Thanatos and Why Not Associates for their 'Comedy Carpet' in Blackpool in collaboration with artist Gordon Young.

http://whynotassociates.com/recent-work-2/the-comedy-carpet/the-work

All the award winners deserve congratulations and it was lovely to see some projects which had been produced on Fenner Paper materials, particularly Air W1 by dn&co, which I've featured on this blog and which was awarded a certificate of excellence:
http://justinsamazingworldatfennerpaper.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/airw1.html

It was an excellent evening which showed a fantastic array of international typographic design excellence. It is SO important for the design industry that we retain organisations such as the ISTD and we must take every opportunity to try and encourage membership, thus ensuring their continued viability.  ...and if you aren't a member, have a look http://www.istd.org.uk/- it costs less than £10 per month - excellent value!

Congratulations to the awards team: David Coates, Belinda Magee, Clare Playne and Freda Sack - a huge amount of time and work goes into these events and it is fair that they should be recognised and applauded. The awards catalogue perfectly illustrates the awards, the diversity of media and approach and an inspiring overview of international typographic design - and I shall write about that next!

The results are now all online here: http://www.istd.org.uk/awards/awards-results

www.istd.org.uk
www.dlwp.com
www.playnedesign.co.uk

Posted by Justin Hobson 06.10.2014

Jobs from the past - Number 33

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...

...and being jubilee year, it seems like a good time to write about this one!

Lightness of Being 2008 - Chris Levine

Chris Levine is a Canadian born light artist who studied at Chelsea School of Art and Central St Martins and this is the invitation and show catalogue for his 2008 show held at the Old Truman Brewery in March 2008.

The centrepiece of the show is Chris’s (now, well known) work "Equanimity", the historic hologram portrait of Queen Elizabeth II (above) commissioned by the Island of Jersey to commemorate 800 years of allegiance to the crown and reputedly the only "portrait" of Her Majesty with her eyes closed. Equanimity 9, is pictured below:

The catalogue and invitation are pictured below. Catalogue is left, invite on the right. The invitation and cover of the catalogue are both printed on Astralux [1 sided] 250gsm which is a "cast coated" board (high gloss one side, uncoated reverse). Gloss coated side is printed in a fluoro pink solid. The invitation is printed CMYK on the outside (uncoated) with the coated (fluoro) on inside...

If you click on the image above, to enlarge, you'll see that the catalogue cover - which is an 8pp cover with the flaps reverse folded so they are on the outside - has a fantastic embossing - which shows the Equanimity image in relief. It just looks fantastic.

Size of both the invitation and the catalogue are A5, portrait. The catalogue is perfect bound with a 36pp text printed on our Neptune Unique FSC 160gsm.Text is printed four colour plus fluoro pink throughout.

Catalogue, invitation and graphics are by Why Not Asscociates. Print is by Push.

This is simply the most innovative use of Astralux as a cover material that I have seen - the way the invitation and catalogue cover switch inside and outside and switch processes is superb and compliments the subject - as it should!

http://www.chrislevine.com/
http://www.push-print.com/
http://www.whynotassociates.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 03.07.2012