Wednesday 27 December 2017

Django Django on Colorset

Django Django are a British rock band and I've only just seen these striking posters produced for their second album Born Under Saturn, which was released in 2015.
This poster is A2 size (594x420mm) and is silk-screen printed in two colours onto our Colorset Deep Orange 270gsm, which is also 100% Recycled.
 
The posters were screen-printed by Gary Parselle at Brighton based silkscreen studio, The Private Press.
 
...Awesome
 
Posted by Justin Hobson 27.12.2017

Thursday 21 December 2017

Jimmy Choo AW 2017 Invitation

If you were to think of impossibly high heels, a world renowned brand and a celebrity following as long as your arm, I'm sure you would think of Jimmy Choo. Founded in 1996, they are now one of the undisputed kings of footwear for the fashionable woman and more recently man.

This is a very luxurious looking invitation to the launch of the Autumn/Winter 2017 collection in Milan. The 2pp Invitation is 148x148mm, square is made using our Flockage Colours 400gsm in Black.
 
The front of the invitation, is hot foil blocked onto a British Racing Green shade board, but the exceptional effect on the Flockage Black on the reverse.
For those of you which are not familiar with this product, it is a flocked board which feels like a velvety cloth/material to the touch but which remarkably you can actually "flatten" the pile by use of a  "heat de-boss". In this case the Leopard skin pattern is "heat de-bossed" with a superb result.
Flockage is an expensive material, but because of the small quantity used and the fact that only one process is being used on it (and waste is therefore minimal) a luxury, high impact impression can be achieved for a relatively low cost.
 
To give these invitations extra weight (and gravitas), they have been duplexed together with a black board with the total thickness being over 3mm.
Art direction and design is by the 'in house' studio at Jimmy Choo and the designer on the project is Sinnie Chong. All aspects of production, including the duplexing, hot foil blocking and heat debossing of the Flockage was done by Add Creative, a production company based in Hong Kong and they also made the matching envelope. I think both the green board and the black inners were sourced locally in Hong Kong.
 
Posted by Justin Hobson 21.12.2017

Monday 18 December 2017

Thread Business Cards

Thread is a studio specialising in design for a wide variety of clients from the art and cultural sector. Thread is the design studio of Michael Windsor-Ungureanu ...and these are his very simple and effective business cards.
I wrote about his new studio brochure earlier in the year but I hadn't realised that very cleverly, he printed his business cards at the same time ...very economical!

Front...
Size of the cards is 85x45mm, there are three different coloured cards, all produced on Colorset - a mix of Ash, Lemon and Deep Orange, all printed offset litho in one special pantone (PMS 072U) blue.
 
Reverse...
For those of you not familiar with Colorset, it is our range of coloured text and cover papers which is also 100% recycled and more competitively priced than some other well known brands of coloured paper! There are 26 colours including black and white

Design is by Michael Windsor-Ungureanu. Printing is by Bowmans based in Leeds

http://www.threaddesign.co.uk/
http://www.bowmans77.co.uk/
Posted by Justin Hobson 18.12.2017

Tuesday 12 December 2017

The Kensington

The Doyle Collection is a carefully curated collection of eight Irish family-owned luxury and urban hotels. Each hotel has a strong identity that is closely connected to its location. Set in the heart of one of London’s most desirable neighbourhoods, The Kensington’s grand stucco façade is characteristic of this affluent 19th Century district. With 126 guest rooms and 24 suites, this is a wonderfully luxurious hotel.
Branding agency, Brave New World  undertook an extensive re-branding exercise of the parent brand and of each individual hotel. The work included everything from strategy to interior design, website, high-profile advertising campaigns and the literature for each hotel.

The size of the brochure is 260x185mm, portrait and is saddle stitched. The cover is printed on an uncoated 300gsm board.  
Click on images to enlarge
The text material chosen was our Omnia, which would beautifully reproduce the photography with the rich interiors and exteriors superbly  ...and it looks wonderful! The 20pp text is on Omnia White 150gsm, printed offset litho in CMYK throughout.
The brochure is saddle stitched using three stitches:
Image reproduction is paramount but it was also important that the publication also projected the tactility of the interiors and in the image below the detail of the upholstery and the extraordinary reproduction of the mirrored surfaces. An ordinary feeling silk or gloss coated paper wasn't an option, so Omnia fitted the bill perfectly.
Click on images to enlarge
Omnia is a very bulky paper but with a 20pp text and the saddle stitching, it lays nice and flat allowing each spread to be enjoyed without 'fighting' against the binding.
Branding and creative direction is by Brave New World. The designer on this project is Caroline King. Print by 21 Colour, based in Glasgow.

https://www.doylecollection.com/hotels/the-kensington-hotel
http://bravenewworld.co/
http://www.21colour.co.uk/
http://www.carolinelking.com/
Posted by Justin Hobson 12.12.2017

Thursday 7 December 2017

Fenner Paper 2018 Diary

If you are a wonderful customer and therefore a deserving user of our papers! ... you will be receiving your new 2018 diary in the post next week. Here's a sneak preview...  
 
As in previous years, the diary is 230x162mm, portrait and retains the popular 'month to view' format. The cover board is printed offset litho in two special pantone colours on Colorset 270gsm.
The 40pp text is simply printed in one colour, offset litho, on our lovely Offenbach Bible 60gsm, which has a superb opacity and a good writing surface making this an ideal paper for a diary or notebook.
 
The diary has been produced in collaboration with the London Centre for Book Arts (LCBA) and features cover artwork by William Luz.

Tucked into your diary will be a handy Chromolux desk calendar to celebrate the fact that the Chromolux range from Zanders is now available through Fenner Paper! 
www.londonbookarts.org
Posted by Justin Hobson 07.12.2017

Monday 4 December 2017

Jobs from the past - Number 98

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...

Amnesty International Concert - 1998
This is a concert programme for a concert held in Paris on 10th December 1998 to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the declaration of human rights. The concert features artists such as Peter Gabriel, Tracy Chapman, Youssou N'Dour, Shania Twain, Alanis Morissette and Radiohead to name just a few. 
London agency Stocks Austin Sice was briefed with the job - as well as being a programme, the brief was to empower the concert-goer. Contained within the programme were a set of postcards that could be detached and posted to leading government officials and politicians to protest against the unjustified holding of certain campaigners (don't forget, this was the pre-internet/email age).

When I was being consulted about the paper, Marek asked me if there was any binding which would have an industrial look and feel and would reflect the barbed wire used in the illustration (by John See). I suggested an industrial "Box staple". These flat staples are used to hold solid and corrugated boxes together as they are stronger than glue.
These flat staples are "stab stitched" through the whole book as you can see in the images above. Seriously industrial and they work a treat!

The below image shows the opening spread, with the perforated, tear out, postcards which are printed (in metallic ink) on our brown range, Kapok 400gsm.
The flap opens out to reveal a quote by Ken Saro-Wiwa:
The below image shows some of the postcards torn out - it was a really great idea.
Below shows the detail of one of the cards with the neat perforation. The cards were printed in black and two metallics, a silver and a bronze.
The size of the publication is 340x230mm, portrait. The extent is a 22pp text (which you can do because it is made up using 2pp pieces) plus front and back covers and 2 pages of perforated cards. The text and cover is printed on our Optimale Blanc Naturel, 250gsm and 140gsm. This was chosen because it had the right feel but also because it was 100% recycled and the production of the publication was sponsored by The Body Shop, so it had to be a recycled product.
The publication is printed offset litho, CMYK throughout. All the solids are made out of CMYK.
There are 6pp of collage images from the work of Amnesty International over fifty years.
The below images show detail of the box staples. With improvements in gluing technology it means that these box staples are used less and less in packaging, so it's harder to find people who have the equipment and who are prepared to do it.
Reverse side:
The report was designed by Stocks Austin Sice (SAS). Creative Director is Nick Austin. Designer is Marek Gwiazda. It's a superb example of a well executed and crafted piece of literature which has stood the test of time.

So where are they all now? SAS was a consultancy founded when three partners left Michael Peters in 1989 and I remember the three partners setting up their company in offices above a bank in Maida Vale. After sustained growth, they sold out to the MSL group in the mid noughties (I think).

Marek Gwiazda is now based in Bristol and runs his own studio and you can read more about this project on his website here:  http://www.marekdesigns.com/folio.php?f=12

The programme was printed by Principal Colour, who are still based in Paddock Wood in Kent.

http://www.marekdesigns.com/
www.principalcolour.co.uk
Posted by Justin Hobson 04.12.2017

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

Monday 27 November 2017

F&F Autumn Winter 2017

The 2017 Autumn Winter collection from F&F could be mistaken for Prada, Louis Vuitton or Ferragamo. This new collection from Tesco's in-house label is inspired by the British countryside, rugged rural landscapes, delivering a contemporary take on heritage fashion. The collection has been delivered by F&F Creative Director, Jan Marchant.

The format is A5 portrait and is saddle stitched with two wires. The cover is on a cover board from that other well known, Hull based, paper company and is beautifully hot foil blocked in a pigmented, matt red foil.
The 28pp text (plus 4pp throwouts) the text is printed on our Shiro Echo, Bright White, 120gsm which is 100% Recycled.
Click on images to enlarge
There is a "4pp throwout" at the back of the book, revealing miniature images with the picture credits.
...and let's not forget the men! The men's range is included from the centre spread backwards.
Shiro Echo 120gsm is quite bulky but 28pp sits well without the gap in the middle "gaping" too much.
The quality of the art direction, photography, repro, print and finishing is superb. The paper also happens to have performed brilliantly - fleshtones and close up detail looking superb, as you can see from the detail image below:
Art direction and design is by London creative agency Odd. The excellent print, repro and finishing is by Gavin Martin Colournet, based in London E3.

https://www.tesco.com/direct/tv-ad.event
http://www.oddlondon.com/
http://www.gavinmartincolournet.co.uk/
Posted by Justin Hobson 27.11.2017