Saturday 28 November 2009

Our visit to Favini.

This week we visited a paper mill in Italy called Favini. It was quite a "whistlestop" tour but Chris (Fenner) and I hadn't been there for many years and it was time to become re-acquainted.
Favini is a group of two mills, one in Rossano (not far from Venice) and one at Crusinallo (pictured). They make a wide and varied range of products including uncoated text and cover papers, feltmarked papers, label papers and Cast Coated papers - many people will be familiar with the ASTRALUX brand of Cast coated papers ...well these are guys that make it!
As you can see from the pictures above, they were making red paper on the day we visited!
Favini have been developing some new products which will hopefully be introduced into the UK market next year. Chris Brown is the Sales and Marketing Director (pictured here) who was showing us around and I must also thank Antonella Agostini, Michele Posco and Caroline Wagner who looked after us very well and who made it a really interesting and enjoyable visit - thank you.

Friday 27 November 2009

SWARA & CO

I've just picked up some copies of this lovely brochure for a new design agency set up by art director Kuchar Swara.

Drawing on a spectrum of talent including stylists, writers, strategists, Swara & Co is working with some of the best names around Europe.

The brochure is written in both English and Italian and is clearly aimed at customers who will identify with quality and art direction at the highest level.

The brochure is 16pp self cover, the size is 340x230mm portrait. It is printed on our Starfine, Natural White 150gsm (which, for those of you that are not familiar with this paper has a smooth feel and a neutral whiteness). A particularly nice touch is the use of black staples.

Here are some of the spreads....

The job was (very nicely) printed by Principal Colour.

www.swaraandco.com
http://www.principalcolour.co.uk/

Tuesday 24 November 2009

Rob Ryan Screenprint

Last week I picked up my file copy of the Rob Ryan limited edition print produced for advanced subcribers of "It's Nice That 2" and it's lovely! Silkscreened in just one colour, this is a great example of the way Rob combines words and illustration which makes his work really special.

Silkscreened in one colour on our Redeem 100% Recycled 315gsm.

Don't forget you would only have received one of these if you pre-ordered your copy of It's Nice That 2 ...so if you don't want to miss out next time, don't forget to pre-order!

www.itsnicethat.com
www.misterrob.co.uk

Monday 23 November 2009

Happy 5th Birthday to Studio Thomson

Last Thursday evening I was invited to a party at the b-store in Saville Row to celebrate Studio Thomson's 5th Birthday. It's quite indredible to think that it's been five years since brothers Mark and Chris Thomson set up, and looking back over the work they have done, they have been quite prolific!
The first job that I recall being involved with was an invitation for PREEN by Thornton Bregazzi in 2005, printed on Redeem 100% Recycled 100gsm.

Then in November 2005 , an invitation for Aquascutum on Offenbach Bible 60gsm printed by Generation Press.
In the summer of 2006, there was a fantastic book to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of PREEN.

This casebound book has a 72pp text and is 250x350mm. It is printed on a combination of Omnia and a coated silk paper (not sure which one!) and has a fantastic quality about it.

...and here's one of the most beautiful and innovative pieces produced on our Flockage Litho. An invitation for Liberty to their Christmas viewing. It is totally unprinted on the flock side, just heat de-bossed [this is a process where you make a block as if for hot foil blocking, and using the foiling machine you simply de-boss using the combination of heat and pressure but with no foil. On the Flocked surface this has the effect of flattenning the pile, so that it becomes smooth and the effect is subtle yet very noticeable]

Anyway it was a fab party, thank you Mark and Chris. Unfortunately I only took a few party pics to share.
[Left] Here is Mark Thomson with Megan Simpkins from Gold East Paper.




...and [Right] Roy Killen from printers PUSH, in deep contemplation with Carlsberg


Party venue, b-store with Studio Thomson "notebook installation"
Exhibition space at b-store with Studio Thomson exhibits:

...and a view through the window at b-store showing the books specially produced for the event.

www.studiothomson.com
http://www.bstorelondon.com

Ghost Forest in Trafalgar Square!

On Friday, I was in London and saw a pretty amazing sight ...massive tree trunks placed around Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square!

Ghost Forest is an ambitious project by Angela Palmer seeking to raise public awareness of the connections between deforestation and climate change. It involves taking a series of 10 rainforest tree stumps, most with their buttress roots still attached, from a regulated, commercially logged tropical rainforest in Ghana.
The tree stumps were presented as a “ghost forest” in Trafalgar Square in London from 16-22 November 2009 (so if you didn't see it, sadly you missed it!) and are moving to Copenhagen for 7-18 December 2009 to coincide with the UN's COP15 Climate Change Conference.


http://www.ghostforest.org/

Friday 20 November 2009

Richard Sanderson - Illustrator

I just received a very nice self promo piece from illustrator Richard Sanderson printed by FS Moore but on paper supplied by Howard Smith! - come on Richard, wake up and smell the coffee, I'm meant to be writing about papers we do here at Fenner Paper! Anyway, I like the piece so much I thought I would share it with you, so have a look at www.rjsanderson.co.uk
www.mooreprint.co.uk

Thursday 19 November 2009

Seasonal paper!

This is a regular job produced by partners Charlie Hanson and Jessica Earle from Studio 10½ for Yorkshire farm retailer, The Farmers Cart - this is the Autumn/Winter edition.The publication uses a lovely selection of illustrations and combined with the typography and the choice of material gives the whole job a very "honest" feel. It is printed in just two special colours, Green and Brown.

The newsletter is simply A3 but because it's concertina folded down to 105x297mm, it certainly doesn't look or feel A3.
There is also an 4pp A5 Christmas leaflet (pictured below) which contains a guide to the seasonal foods available together with activities at the Farm, including Sleigh rides, which sound rather fun! And of course I should mention the material it is printed on ...our Redeem 100% Recycled 100gsm - and as you can see from the lovely note below, Charlie and Jess are big fans!
http://www.thefarmerscart.co.uk/
http://www.tenandahalf.net/

Monday 16 November 2009

Excellent re-use of our sample packaging

I was VERY pleased to find out that our packaging (large corrugated box) that we use to send our B1 samples out in has been successfully utilised as a fancy dress outfit.
Richard Rhodes from London design studio VERY, used it as the basis for his VERY "Special K" outfit for a party at the weekend.

The party was themed on two letters, either K or M and apparently someone else went as a box of Maltesers! JP at VERY went as Mozart, with wig and all.

Well done for keeping up the creative standards amongst London's partygoers! ...but a bit worried about the longjohns!

Friday 13 November 2009

ISTD Awards 2009

I was lucky enough to go to the ISTD awards last Friday and it was a great evening. It was held at the Arts Club in London's Mayfair. As with all ISTD events, there is a real air of friendliness and fellowship, whether this is because there is always an international element, I don't know. I was seated at a table with people from Holland (http://www.studiovanson.com/) who were a great laugh.

The series of three posters below is the ISTD Awards 2009 Overall Winner by Paris based, Studio Apeloig (www.apeloig.com)

All award winners deserve congratulations, but in particular, there are some people who I must mention:

Cartlidge Levene for the wayfinding & environmental graphics for The Guardian building - (I know it's not on paper, but it's still fantastic work!) http://www.cartlidgelevene.co.uk/

Barrie Tullett and Philippa Wood who are lecturers at University of Lincoln and who run The Caseroom Press for The Ghost in the Fog (pictured left).

This is a book that only contains the corrections and alterations of the author.

Congratulations on their Premier award (by the way, it's printed on our Offenbach Bible 60gsm)


NB:Studio won a Certificate of Excellence for their series of House magazines for Soho House, the covers of which are below: http://www.nbstudio.co.uk/
...and the list goes on - The Chase for their marvellous woodblock letters made from chocolate, Studio 8 for FUTU magazine and Henrik and Scott from A2/SW/HK for a clutch of awards.
http://www.thechase.co.uk/

Here's a very cheerful looking Paulus M. Dreibholz, happy with his well deserved Certificate of Excellence for the poster for the Institute of Architecture in Vienna.

http://www.gaffadesign.com/


Malcolm Garrett (http://www.appliedinformationgroup.com/) and David Coates (http://www.tothepoint.co.uk/), lurking behind the scenes!

...and a prize for anyone who can guess which dark horse from the NB:Studio table this is (answers on a nice postcard please!)
It was an excellent evening which showed a fantastic array of international typographic excellence. It is REALLY important for our industry that we retain societies such as the ISTD and we must take every opportunity to try and encourage membership, thus ensuring their continued viability.

So if you aren't a member, have a look http://www.istd.org.uk/ - for less than £10 per month - this is good value!

Thursday 12 November 2009

A talented Illustrator - Ciara Phelan

I just received an e-mail from a talented new designer/illustrator, Ciara Phelan. She has recently gone freelance, based in London.
Although we've never met, I like her work! Have a look: www.iamciara.co.uk.

Wednesday 11 November 2009

Invitation to a wine tasting...

This is an example of a beautifully executed invitation done by an agency in Edinburgh that I work with called Touch.

It's A5 in size and just very simply foiled in two colours on our Monoblack 1400mics (...yes that's nearly 1.5mm thick!) Lovely typography and foiled to a very high satandard by IST printing services in Ayrshire.
...and thank you, Chris, for the lovely note.

Tuesday 10 November 2009

Back on the grid

I just wanted to welcome Chris Wigan back to the UK. Chris took a year off and has been working and travelling South America, where apparently the steak is pretty good!

Chris is well know for being the creative behind ‘Change the World for a Fiver’ and ‘I’m Not A Plastic Bag’ whilst a partner at Antidote. I first worked with Chris at Johnson Banks, then at Circus, Antidote and most recently at Dave.

He's now the new creative director at ethical communications agency Provokateur, have a look...
http://www.provokateur.com/e/1/index.html

Friday 6 November 2009

Fashion Rations!

This is a really fun piece of internal communications for fashion retailer, Whistles. They run a scheme where staff members can offer a limited "friends and family" discount. They coined the phrase "fashion rations" and decided to produce some ration book style booklets in a small "ladies purse" size.

Importantly, they wanted the pages of "stamps" to be perforated and on a gummed paper. Well many of you won't know that we keep a gummed paper in stock at Fenner Paper called Novafix (and are the UK distributors for Swedish manufacturer Artinova).

To complete the ration book feel, the booklets were "stab stitched" (that's where the staple goes through the whole book, from front to back - like a cheque book - although the term cheque book binding normally implies, the application of binding tape over the stab stitches).

The size of the book is A7 (105x74mm) portrait, with Idaho Blu Sky, 216gsm for cover with 3 leaves of perforated stamp pages on Novafix white 80gsm.

A particularly nice touch is that the front of all the books are "crash numbered" on the covers. For those of you who aren't aware of this process, it is an old letterpress process which uses a numbering box on a platten. It is an "impact" process which simply thumps the number on the sheet and then (in a clockwork style) clicks on one digit.
Print production was done by PrintStation, based in Bexhill in Sussex (carole@print-station.biz).
The job was designed in house at Whistles by Jess Hilton ...thank you Jess for the nice note.

Thursday 5 November 2009

What a lovely surprise!

I've just had a lovely surprise this morning. Not only have I received a letter (that's not just a dig at the post office, it's just that in this e-mail age, I hardly ever receive a proper letter these days) but it's also a really nice thank you letter!

It turns out that we supplied one of our materials (called Kapok) to Richard Harnasz, who is a student at LCC (School of Printing and Publishing) and this, in part, helped him on his achievement of winning the 2009 Printweek Student of the Year award!

http://www.printweek.com/news/945968/

I wrote about the Printweek awards (see post 20.10.2009) but hadn't realised that Richard had won the Student award. Anyway, congratulations on the award Richard and thank you for taking the time and trouble to write.

richard.thewatchthisspaceco@gmail.com

Tuesday 3 November 2009

B&W success at 2009 Roses Design Awards

On Friday 23rd October it was the 2009 Roses Design Awards held in Nottingham. Particularly worthy of note is B&W Studio in Leeds as they collected five awards at the 2009 Roses awards, including the Chairman's award ...well done Lee and Steve.

Monday 2 November 2009

Jobs From The Past - Number 2

Regular followers will know that my first post of every month is a "job from the past" (see post on 01/10/2009), so that I can show some of the memorable jobs from times past.

Life 5/2/96 ERICSSON "you only have one life - live it"


This is an amazing job which still looks and feels as fresh as it did thirteen years ago! Produced in 1996 by Imagination for Swedish mobile phone manufacturer Ericsson. This was a piece of literature to accompany the trade stand at the CeBIT telecommunications show. The Creative Director was Stuart Jane and the Designer was Melissa Price with photography by the in-house team at Imagination.

The journal documents a working day in the lives of 7 European professionals and shows how Ericsson products "provide freedom, flexibility and control"! It is written in both English and German.

The job is 240x320mm Portrait, saddle stiched. It is printed on our Neptune Unique but has an unusual combination of weights with 4pp cover on 300gsm with 16pp on 200gsm and 20pp on 135gsm with an irregular order for the weights - works really well.




The job was printed by a company called Litho-Tech based in Kennington, London who at the time was one of the leading corporate printers in London if not the UK. Sadly like many printers of that era, the company no longer exists. It was printed offset litho in six colours. My notes aren't completely clear but I think the run was either 5,000 or 10,000 copies. Peter Roberts was the sales executive, Les Baker, the production manager and Paul Watson the Managing Director.

This was still in the very early days of using high quality uncoated text and cover materials for corporate communications but certainly Neptune Unique worked extremely well with the double hit vibrant green on the cover and gunmetal metallic silver special printed on the inside.

So where are they all now? The designer on the project, Melissa Price is at Cartlidge Levene. Creative Director, Stuart Jane is at Venture Three. Peter Roberts, who was the sales executive at printers Litho-Tech who handled the job, now runs his own print management company called Urban Life Support and Les Baker is now Works Manager at St Ives, Westerham Press. As for the others, if you know, let me know....

http://www.ericsson.com
http://www.imagination.com
http://www.venturethree.com
http://www.cartlidgelevene.co.uk
http://www.urbanlifesupport.com
http://www.st-ives.co.uk