Tuesday 14 July 2009

Launch for Beam


I want to send my best wishes to Christine Fent and Dominic Latham-Koenig who are launching their new company "Beam" at a party tonight. Sadly I can't be there but it was lovely to have been invited, especially with such a lovely "flickbook" invitation.











Although sadly not on any of our paper, it is a really lovely idea. The flickbook is produced by Swiss bindery BuBu (http://www.bookfactory.ch/) and works really well. If I was a bit more tech'd up, I'd have put a video here flicking through it, but sadly I'm not that sorted!















Best wishes to Christine and Dominic.

Monday 13 July 2009

Channel 4 Annual Report

I have just received some copies of the new Channel 4 Annual Report designed by NB:Studio.

This is a lovely piece of literature which has just the right "feel" in the hand. The size is 325x240mm - nice size.

The covers are "wrapped" in single sided posters. There are four different versions of the posters reflecting each of Channel 4's public purposes. All the posters have a sticker affixed.

This 138pp document is printed on Marazion Ultra 90gsm which some might consider a bit light - but it works really well. The paper has got a really good opacity and has taken the images really well (but I would say that wouldn't I?). The spine is around 8mm thick.

The job was printed by Push (http://www.push-print.co.uk/)

My advice is to see if you can get hold of a copy. Given the dire quality of the vast majority of annual reports that I see nowadays (unlike some of the great pieces of work produced in the 90's!) , this one is really worth seeing.

Friday 10 July 2009

Paper Swallows

Last week, I was asked by fashion house GHOST if I know anyone who did origami! Well luckily, I remembered that Eng Su, who I first met at NB:Studio and who is now freelancing (see my post on 13/06/09) has a penchant for the papery art! ...so after a couple of quick phonecalls I put the two in touch and Eng made over 50 swallows for their new catalogue launch event yesterday.

They used a mixture of Offenbach Bible 60gsm and StarFine White 100gsm.

Everybody was happy!
Here is a pic and a lovely thank you note from Eng - thank you.
http://www.engsu.co.uk/

Tuesday 7 July 2009

Letterpress Invite

Jonathan at Campbell Hay has just sent me some file copies of an invitation which has been printed two colour Letterpress. The material that was chosen was our Matrisse 450gsm which is a very heavy weight, bulky, high white, tactile uncoated board. Most importantly, it is made in a single ply and therefore less prone to warping than duplexed materials.

It is a simple, clever design, well executed.
...and a lovely note is always appreciated - thank you Jonathan

ISTD awards & special congratulations to Lincoln...

On Friday evening I was invited to the ISTD Student awards evening which was hosted at The Partners in London EC1 (thanks to Creative Director, Jack Renwick). It was an excellent evening and it was good to see so many people that I've worked with over the years (The ISTD is a fantastic organisation and I'm proud to have been working in association with them since the mid nineties). http://www.istd.org.uk/

Alan Kitching presented the certificates and it was a great evening.

It was particularly eventful for the Lincoln School of Art & Design (University of Lincoln) as not only did 8 of their students walk away with certificates but the Vincent Steer award (which is the highest student accolade) was presented to Chris Mahoney for his project "MP3".

...and only the evening before, at the D&AD Student awards, the team which had designed and organised "The Design Auction" were awarded a yellow pencil. http://www.designauction.co.uk/. The team are Toby Burkill, Danny Elliot, Steve Fenn and Lauren Traynor - congratulations to you all.
I have been working with some of the tutors at Lincoln for a few years now and I have done a few talks to their courses. These award achievements really are a reflection of the dedication and quality of the tutors at this particular college, in particular, Barrie Tullett, Philippa Wood and John Dowling (part time). They really are an example of a department that goes that extra mile - and the results (and quality of their students) are there for all to see...
http://www.dowlingdesign.com/
http://www.the-case.co.uk/

Monday 6 July 2009

Job from the past...

This is a superb piece of literature produced in 2002 by silkscreen printer and "boutique production house" Artomatic.

"ilikeprinting" is the the name of this innovative art/design/publishing project. Essentially it is a series of original screenprints which celebrate the culture of printed graphics and the talents of graphics artists from around the world. The prints were sold, either individually or as a boxed set and this was the accompanying book or literature that was published with the prints.  

The size of the book is 210x148mm, portrait. It has a 4pp cover and 64pp text printed on Optimale Blanc Naturel 250gsm and 140gsm. The 8pp dustjacket is silkscreened one colour on Wibalin book covering paper.

The text is all printed in one colour - and here's the tricksy bit - facsimiles of all the artworks have been litho printed on coated gloss paper and are individually "tipped in" on each right hand page. as you can see...
Electro-luminescent Car Component off/on by GTF
Currency by Tom Hingston & Robert Del Naja
Untitled by KAWS
Radioaktivtat by Mason Wells
There are 29 artworks in total, all exceptionally good - I wish I could show them all here. I can't, so you'll just have to look at the list of participants as reproduced on the outside cover.
8pp dustjacket wraps around the cover like so....
A really interesting (and important) point of note is the binding. Because the pieces were being stuck in to the book it could have created an ugly bulging where the eneveness in the text area would have made it look unsightly. So to get round this problem, they employed a technique called "guard binding" or "binding with a guard" which is the same method used for traditional photo albums: 
As you can see from the pic above, it is "section sewn" but has a "guard", which is a full height but narrow width slip of material interleaved between each of the pages, thereby bulking out the spine. Smart thinking and it maitained the overall excellent appearance of the book.

So who and what were Artomatic? Their roots were as a silkscreen printer founded by Tim Milne in 1982 who then branched out into print and production management specialising in creatively driven projects. In the early 2000's they took a space with a shop front in the trendy Great Sutton Street in Clerkenwell and set up a "print library" with examples of materials, processes and file copies and a gallery space. Design companies signed up (and paid) to become members and in 2001, the figure of signed up members was around 450. There was a real buzz and a great sense of excitement and there was some excellent talent there. Robert Gaddie and Daniel Mason (both of whom I still work with) were both at Artomatic.
Artomatic was definitely ahead of it's time. Heidi Lightfoot (then a director at Trickett & Webb) described their position in the market as "unique" in an article that appeared in DesignWeek in 23.01.2003 and reproduced in Printing World on 10.02.2003. Tim Milne proudly announced that "Artomatic is in a position to bring aspects of such jobs, the same level of understanding that is put into branding aspects. We have something to say to the industry and the world would be a poorer place without us." Sadly, later that year they went bust and ceased trading. The shop closed and some of the library was bought by Gavin Martin for their PrintLounge concept.

Most people will remember Artomatic with great affection (...although not George Fearnley from Longford Press who wrote to Printing World bemoaning the loss of £54,000 when Artomatic went into liquidation!) They genuinely were a very forward thinking organisation with great ideas and a real drive to make print special. It was a shame that they did not survive. The last I heard of Tim was that he moved to New York.
Posted by Justin Hobson 06.07.2009

Wednesday 1 July 2009

Thank You's

It's always nice to receive a "thank you" - and this one was especially nice. I had sent some copies of Size, Format, Stock to Chris Clarke who also lectures part time, and he sent me this very lovely limited edition postcard. I've got 46 out of 300. www.chris-clarke.co.uk