Showing posts with label Merchant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Merchant. Show all posts

Thursday 6 October 2011

Brunswick Review - Issue Four

This is the latest edition of The Brunswick Review, a piece of literature produced by the global Corporate Relations and Communications company Brunswick. This publication is produced for circulation to clients of the fifteen Brunswick offices throughout the world. Guest contributors include senior people at Diageo, Goldman Sachs and Reuters combined with Kevin Spacey and Mark Twain (well actually, that particular article is a reproduction!)

The original concept and design style for the Brunswick Review was by Kirsten Johnston at Johnston Works (see previous post  http://justinsamazingworldatfennerpaper.blogspot.com/2010/04/brunswick-review.html) but it is now designed in house by MerchantCantos, a Brunswick Group company.

The size of the publication is 280x216mm. It is has a 4pp cover and 86pp text. It is printed on Redeem 100% Recycled 240gsm and 100gsm. Print is by Fulmar Colour.

At a time when many companies are cutting down on print as a means of customer communication, it's impressive and refreshing to see one of the world's largest corporate relations companies printing this excellent publication - it might be worth reminding some clients that PRINT ...WORKS (if it's well designed and produced on the right papers, of course!)

Thanks to Russell Thompson for sending me file copies and a lovely note:

http://www.fulmarcolour.com/
Posted by Justin Hobson 06.10.2011

Tuesday 4 January 2011

Jobs from the past - Number 15

Happy New Year!

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. ...here's the first post for 2011.

Merchant Handbook - 2002

Merchant is the corporate reporting arm of global PR firm Brunswick. In the 1990's years they used to produce a report called the Merchant Handbook, showing FTSE listed companies and which agency did their reporting and who printed it etc. - it used to be quite interesting reading. By the 2000's the burden of collating this information was too great and the Merchant Handbook became a yearly publication of relevant articles about reporting, CSR and investor relations.

At that time Merchant managed the production and design and used a collection of independent studios to do the creative work. This report was designed by NB:Studio.

The report contains articles on six different subjects and each one forms it's own booklet. Each booklet is designed in a completely different style, either purely typographic, illustrative image based etc. and to emphasise the difference, each booklet is on a different material. Some are printed CMYK, some 2 colour and 1 colour plus silkscreen.
Each individual booklet was saddle stitched and they were then 'double-sided' to each other (back to front covers) along the spines only allowing each booklet to open freely but giving the appearance of a neatly stacked pile of different booklets from the front. The overall size of the job is 225x280mm portrait (cover size) with a 14mm spine.

The materials used were Episiode IV 115gsm, Alga Carta 90gsm, Millennium Real Art 170gsm, Dali Neve 160gsm, Neptune Unique 135gsm, Appledawn Cream Velvet 150gsm, some of which are now defunct.

One of the crucial factors that contibuted to the success of the job was the selection of the board for the cover. Being a 4pp cover but with a parallel creased 'freestanding' spine and all the weight being stuck into the inside back cover, it needed to be a substantial piece of board. Our Aerographic Twin 500gsm was used with a gloss lamination on the outside cover and it really works.
Creative directors on the project at NB: Studio were the three partners (Nick, Ben and Alan) and the designer was Nick Vincent. This is just a lovely piece of printed literature - it is extremely engaging. However from memory I don't think it was nominated or won any awards which was a shame and a bit of a surprise. The  2003 Handbook (also designed by NB) was nominated for illustration at D&AD and was also on our paper, so maybe I'll write about that some other time!

The publication was produced under Managing Director, Robert Moser's watchful eyes and the project was managed by Leonie Dixon. Russell Thompson oversaw the print production and finishing (most importantly) of the job which was printed by Impressions in Wimbledon, who (like many printers from that era) don't exist anymore.

So where are they all now? Russell Thompson is production director at Merchant, Nick and Alan remain at the eponymous NB:Studio (http://www.nbstudio.co.uk/), Ben Stott now works independently on his own projects (http://www.benstott.com/) and  Nick Vincent set up his own studio (http://www.vincentdesign.co.uk/) ...oh, and I'm still at Fenner Paper!

Posted by Justin Hobson 04.01.2011