Showing posts with label Kickstarter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kickstarter. Show all posts

Monday 29 May 2023

Kickstart the Typographic Workshop

This is a recently launched Kickstarter project which I think you might like to support...
Theo Hersey in the workshop. Photo by Owen Tozer.
Theo Hersey is a young designer who graduated from the LCC. Whilst at university and during his 'gap year' he has been assisting Alan Kitching at The Typography Workshop in Kennington. Even though he now has a full time job as a graphic designer, he continues to assist and collaborate with Alan.
Alan Kitching & Theo in the Workshop. Photo by Tom Gifford.
Alan Kitching floated the idea of Theo purchasing the workshop from him and he needs your help.
There is a vast collection of fonts held at the workshop, from Caslon Old Face to Futura and everything in between in both metal & wood type. The collection is a brilliant array demonstrating the rich history of type design from both British and overseas type foundries, many having been purchased from the type foundries in their closing years. Theo is now in the extremely fortunate position to be able to take over the space and continue the legacy of The Typography Workshop and develop letterpress in his own style into the future.
One of the 250+ cases of wood & metal type. Photo by Theo Hersey.
Fenner Paper has been in contact with Alan Kitching and the Typography Workshop for over 30 years, I first met Alan back in the Clerkenwell workshops back in the early 90's and he designed the Fenner Paper diary cover in 2010 and uses our diary in the workshop to this day. We are very happy to continue this collaboration and support Theo in his endeavour.

Theo is being supported by friend and collaborator Anthony Burrill and they have designed three exclusive prints for this Kickstarter campaign.
Theo Hersey & Anthony Burrill. Photo by Owen Tozer.
So, how do you support Theo? ...it's easy! have a look at the Kickstarter page HERE, where you can choose to either simply donate or purchase some of the excellent rewards. Do it NOW and ensure the continuation of The Typography Workshop and the craft of letterpress printing in its South London home whilst also helping a talented youngster who will take it forward into the future.

Posted by Justin Hobson 29.05.2023
 

Wednesday 6 October 2021

'Until the Last Oak Falls'

Today a Kickstarter project was launched which is well worth a look and is worthy of your support...
Adrian Fisk is a photographer/film-maker; his work has featured in the world’s top current-affairs periodicals and he works for top advertising, design and PR agencies and major international brands. He spent five years documenting youth counter-culture against the 1990s socio-political backdrop of environmental protests, illegal raves and anti-globalization. 'Until the Last Oak Falls' contains a collection of powerful, compelling and important photographs, many never seen before, that he made documenting the early days of the British direct action environmental movement from 1995 - 1999.
An essay written by Jay Griffiths (author of Why Rebel) will feature facsimiles of printed protest ephemera from the 90’s. The book will be 160pp and the size is 170mm wide by 240mm high. This format ensures minimal paper wastage and a maximum page size from industry standard paper sheets. You can read lots more about the project HERE.
Design is by Zoë Bather and Linda Byrne.

Launched today with a £16,000 goal ...it's only with your support that this book will happen. Go on - you know you want to!

Friday 18 June 2021

INQUE Bookmarks

Last summer, you may remember that a Kickstarter campaign for a new magazine INQUE, which I wrote about here. INQUE is a large-format annual literary magazine from Dan Crowe and Matt Willey. Dedicated to commissioning and publishing diverse global writing next to extraordinary art, design and photography, with an editorial remit to be creatively groundbreaking. The crowdfunding campaign was hugely successfully and the first issue is due out this October.

In the meantime, they have produced various goodies, T shirts, Tote bags etc and these amazing bookmarks (or should it be bookmarques!)

The size is 77mm x 210mm and they are hot foil blocked on our Sumo, Black 1mm board, so they are very substantial and look great. The invitation is printed on SUMO, which is our a heavyweight, thick board manufactured by FAVINI in Italy. It is available in black and white and the consists of 1mm, 1.5mm, 2mm up to a whopping 3mm thick ...seriously chunky! The has also now been extended to include a small range of colours - five new shades all available in 1mm thick.
Click on images to enlarge

Design is by Matt Willey. They have been beautifully hot foil blocked in gloss black foil by Identity Print.
I'm not sure what you have to do to get one of these lovely bookmarks, but in the meantime you could subscribe to issue one HERE - it's not too late!

Friday 11 May 2018

Abram Games - Shakespeare Kickstarter

Earlier this year, I wrote a piece about a publication featuring the work of Abram Games, which you can read again here.

Abram Games is acknowledged as being one of the 20th Century's greatest image makers, his work is now a fascinating record of social history. For over 60 years he produced some of Britain’s most memorable images including the war years as Official War Poster Artist producing over one hundred posters. He was the designer of the Festival of Britain emblem and his clients included the United Nations, London Transport, British Airways, Shell, the Financial Times, Guinness and of course book jackets for Penguin books. He also created the first animated BBC on-screen ident in 1953.

One of the spreads in my article included this poster that he produced for the Royal Shakespeare Theatre centenary appeal in 1975, featured on the left hand spread below:
The poster was hailed a huge success by the RSC and as far as Abram's family knew at the time, he considered the job completed. But thanks to an exciting discovery we now know that Abram’s intentions for the much-admired image went far further than a poster. After his death in 1996, Abram's daughter and archivist, Naomi Games, happened upon a mock-up he had made of a flickbook based on the poster image. As she turned the pages of the book Shakespeare's face gradually appeared, one play at a time. From the designs she could see that her father had even experimented with getting Shakespeare to wink!

...so please join in the Kickstarter campaign and help make this piece of print a reality:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2109961696/abram-games-the-shakespeare-project

Posted by Justin Hobson 11.05.2018

Tuesday 20 September 2016

British Rail Corporate Identity Manual

Many of you may be aware of this successful Kickstarter project - a high specification reproduction of the iconic British Rail Corporate Identity Manual. It has been widely profiled in many design magazines, blogs etc, even making an appearance on BBC news!

The book is the brainchild and passion of Wallace Henning, who first read about the Manual around seven years ago, which in turn lead to his dedicating his MA to creating an identity for a renationalised transport network and also began collecting British Rail ephemera.
Image showing the original Manual
The foreword is by Michael C Place, creative director and founder of Build. The introduction is written by Tony Howard, former head of design at British Rail, now managing director of Transport Design Consultancy. There is an essay from James Greenfield, creative director of Koto together with an essay from Dr Paul Rennie, writer and Context Subject Leader at Central Saint Martins. There is also an interview with Gerry Barney, designer of the British Rail double arrow symbol.
Image showing pre-production copy of the new book
The publication is now in the production phase, so I thought I'd write a little about the production and the selection of the paper
The book itself is 310x247mm, section sewn and casebound, covered in a white bookcloth with 472 pages and five 'gatefold' spreads, with the whole production weighing just under 2 kilos! The pages are all printed offset litho, with the original pages reproduced in CMYK and the additional pages printed in two spot colours.
 
When I was first briefed about the project, the material that was used for the original book was described as a 'hard calendered' smooth white cartridge paper. This would have been commonly used for guidelines as it is more robust than a coated paper and for the reproduction, mainly illustrations, this paper would give the best result.
 
...now it's important to remember that this book is a "high specification facsimile" not trying to reproduce an exact copy, so a paper that was sympathetic to the original was important, but not necessarily an exact match.
 
A wide range of quite different papers were considered for the project, but the one that Wallace felt had the right 'feel' for the project was Lessebo Design Smooth White in 130gsm. The Lessebo Mill is located in remote area of southern Sweden called Småland. The mill is named after the town in which the mill is situated (Lessebo) and is surrounded by a rugged terrain full of boulders and dense forests between large shallow lakes. Bruk is the Swedish word for mill, hence Lessebo Bruk.


Founded in the middle of the 17th century as an iron mill, it was granted permission by the local government to produce paper in 1693. It should go without saying that all paper was made by hand at this point in time and it wasn't until the 19th century that paper machines were invented. It is also worth noting that the mill still has a Handmade Paper studio ...where I have actually made paper!

 Lessebo Bruk is a mill with complete focus on forest based products with a modern product mix of graphical papers, dissolving cellulose and energy - in fact their power plant heats the town swimming pool as well as a great many of the houses in the town!

The paper was manufactured during the summer and the below picture shows the pallets and pallets of paper at the printer.
Print is being handled by Jon Arnold at JDA Graphics and it is printed on a Komori, offset litho, B1 format HUV press. The advantage of HUV is that the ink is cured at the end of the press, without the need for 'sealing' or 'coating' the paper - certainly a significant advantage in terms of speed of turnaround for finishing. Here is the paper on press...
Another important factor as you can see from the image above, the sheets have 16pp to view (32pp per sheet). An important factor of book production (and arguably for the production of all printed literature) is that the 'grain direction' of the paper runs from the head to the foot of the book (i.e. parallel to the spine). This is important because of the way the paper feels and 'rolls' and the way the text flops and lays open. The grain direction refers to the way the fibres lie in the direction of the paper machine and is one of the most important physical characteristics of a paper. The paper for this project had to be ordered as 'short grain' so when the sheets are folded into sections, the direction of the grain will run parallel to the spine.

All the sections are now printed and on their way to the bindery ...I can't wait to see the finished copy.

The good news is that there are still copies available to buy - over and above the copies which are already committed to those who supported the Kickstarter campaign. You can still pre-order copies at a cost of just £60. You can read more about the project and pre-order here:
http://www.britishrailmanual.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 20.09.2016

Monday 29 February 2016

Are you a parent ...?

Here's an interesting project which I thought you might like to see...

Regular readers of this blog will be aware of some of the projects which I have featured which have been funded by Kickstarter. Lorna and Daniel Freytag contacted me about this fun project which is on Kickstarter right now.
In their words:
We're a mum and dad team called HeyWow! working from the small seaside town of Oban on the north-west coast of Scotland with our two little highland monsters (aged 2 and 4). Twelve months ago we had the crazy idea of creating our own personalised children's books, to bring a bit more WOW to kids lives. Our aim was to create something vibrant, well designed and exciting that parents could enjoy too! How hard can that be??? Ha! Nearly one year later (in between caring for the kids) and after lots of brain storming, cups of tea, sketching, tea, emails, business plans, photo shoots, more tea, Skype calls and many many late nights, we're now ready to reveal our first picture book... 'In the City'.

Here are some HeyWow links
Our Kickstarter campaign
www.heywow.co
www.twitter.com/HeyWowBooks
www.facebook.com/heywow
Posted by Justin Hobson 29.02.2016

Tuesday 31 March 2015

Curious Iconic Craft

This is one of the most stunning projects produced last year on our paper. Read on and be amazed....!

For anyone interested in magazine design, Little White Lies and Huck would be two independent magazine titles that you'd be aware of and would probably collect. The agency The Church of London was founded on 5 January and Little White Lies first hit the shelves on 12 March 2005. After eight years, the founders Danny Miller, Rob Longworth, Paul Willoughby and Alex Capes stepped away from the agency and the titles. Danny Rob and Paul formed a new creative agency called Human After All.

Their leaving present to their fans was to produce a limited edition publication packed with insights into how the two titles have been put together, a fantastic resource for those interested in magazine design. The book is titled  Curious Iconic Craft.

They decided to fund the project by Kickstarter and you can see their entry on the link below - needless to say it was overfunded!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/humanafterall/curious-iconic-craft-designing-magazines-that-peop?ref=nav_search
The size of the publication is 245mm x 200mm portrait with 4pp outer cover, 2x2pp 'end papers' cover, tip ins and a 96pp text. The publication is what I would describe as a 'double-ender' - the cover and text read one way and then you turn it over and it reads the other way. The image below, shows the way the cover works:
The cover is printed on Omnia 320gsm, with a 'soft touch' film lamination and is hot foil blocked with a gloss black foil - looks and feels beautiful!
 
The reason for the book being produced like this is that one half the book is about Little White Lies and one half is about Huck.
 
The LWLies text section is 40pp and is printed offset litho in CMYK with a fluorescent pink pantone special. End paper (l/h side) is printed in pantone silver on  Zeta Linen Embossed,150gsm
The text pages are printed on Omnia White 150gsm and the result is simply stunning. Whether a photographic image, illustration or just solids, this paper really has performed - it is truly remarkable.

In the centre there are two 'tip ins' on Colorset Nero 170gsm section printed in silver PMS 877. Looks fantastic just printed in one colour silver and the line illustrations just work amazingly. Additionally there is a 16pp section printed in one colour on a light green 160gsm uncoated paper (Papago) for the 'learning section'. The whole publication is full of key insights and attention to detail, including: how to create a cover illustration, how to design a custom typeface, original sketches and behind-the-scenes work.
Birds eye view (click on image to enlarge)
The HUCK text section is also 40pp and is printed offset litho in CMYK with a fluorescent green pantone special. End paper (l/h side) is printed in pantone silver on  Zeta Linen Embossed,150gsm.
The publication is section sewn using black thread. Another lovely detail.
Curious Iconic Craft is published and designed by the studio by Human After All. Creative Directors are Danny Miller, Rob Longworth, Paul Willoughby. Production handled by Hannah El-Boghdady.
 
The book was printed and produced by Jigsaw Colour. The complexity of the publication with the endpapers, soft touch cover, with foil and "tip ins" made this a truly challenging project to deliver, but the print and finishing are both absolutely superb.

http://www.humanafterall.co.uk/
www.jigsawcolour.co.uk
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/humanafterall/curious-iconic-craft-designing-magazines-that-peop?ref=nav_search
http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/curious-iconic-craft-human-after-all
Posted by Justin Hobson 31.03.2015