Wednesday 20 January 2016

McQ Men

McQ, is the contemporary brand from Alexander McQueen which takes inspiration from street culture "evoking the varied and ever-evolving style tribes that spring up around Britain’s rich music and art scenes. Drawing on references from uniform and the military, core staples of the British wardrobe are re-imagined each season in new guises. Traditional techniques are used in contemporary ways, creating pieces that are both functional and beautiful"

Creative Director of Alexander McQueen and McQ is Sarah Burton. This is the season's lookbook for men.

The size of the publication is 450x320mm, portrait and is a 12pp self cover. It is printed on our lightweight Offenbach Bible 60gsm and is a beautifully designed publication.
The lookbook is printed in four colour offset litho and is a superb example of printing on Offenbach Bible - superb solid coverage and deep monochrome images reproduced in CMYK. 
Click on images to enlarge
Due to the lightweight nature of the paper it just flops beautifully, with a bewitching feel.
Design and art direction is by Rupert Smith who is a freelance art director based in London. This is an elegant and splendidly produced publication. To get these dark images to look this good on an uncoated paper is a real achievement. Print is by Rob Squires at Pureprint.

www.pureprint.com
Posted by Justin Hobson 20.01.2016

Monday 18 January 2016

What is ...Wiro Binding?

What is ...Number 25
Regular followers of this blog will know that in the middle of the month, I publish a "What is ....? post. The article covers various aspects of paper, printing and finishing in greater depth. However, many of these subjects are complex, so these posts are only intended to be a brief introduction to the topic.

What is ...Wire-O® Binding
Wire-O ® binding is a popular binding method where the text leaves are punched and held together in a closed metal 'ring' which allows for 360 degree rotation of the pages.


The term "Wire-O"® is actually a registered trademark of a company called James Burn International. Therefore everytime you use the word Wire-O ® it should have a little ® after it. To be honest, this ® thing is getting a bit boring and I'm pretty confident anyone reading this will now know that it is a registered trademark! ...so I'm not using the little ® again! This type of binding is also referred to as twin loop wire, wirebind, double loop wire, ring wire and double-o. To the left is an example of a typical wire-o bound job.

Here is an image of a wire before it is closed to make a ring: 
The below image shows the 'join' when the ring has been closed. You can see the way the two ends "marry" together stopping the cover and text coming apart.  This 'seam' normally appears in the inside back cover.  
Wire-O can either be produced in an office on a 'desk-top' machine or commercially on large fully automated machines where the wires are fed on huge spools. Below is an example of a "desktop" type binding machine.
Firstly the paper must be punched - either with square or round holes. The punched pages are then placed onto the "C" shaped wire. When complete it is placed into the wire closer which squeezes the spine until it is round.

Now there is an important thing that is worth pointing out. There are two common hole patterns used for wiro. 3:1 pitch is 3 holes per inch is most commonly used for binding small sized documents between 2mm and 10mm thickness. Larger documents use 2:1 pitch which is 2 holes per inch. The physical wire is a different thickness. On the left there is an image showing A4 length wire. On the left hand side is a 3:1 pitch and on the right is a 2:1 pitch
Below is a practical demonstration of the difference between 3:1 and 2:1. It is a catalogue for artist Callum Innes at the Ikon Gallery. It was designed by Lucy Richards and printed by Summerhall Press and printed on Neptune Unique Softwhite in 1996. The catalogue on the left is 6mm thick and is bound using a 3:1 wire. The catalogue on the right is 14mm thick and uses a 2:1 wire.
Click on images to enlarge
Below is the birds eye view, showing the thicknesses and the wire.
Click on images to enlarge
One other thing that is worth pointing out here is that there are various styles that can be used to make the cover and text a bit more interesting!

Here is an example of a standard wire-o
Below is a style where the wire is concealed inside a spine in the cover and the wire is exposed on the outside back cover. This format is called a 'half canadian'
...and here is an example of a 'full canadian' where the wire is exposed on both the outside front and back cover
Below is a standard wiro, which has been bound on the end of an 8pp cover which then 'reverse folds' on itself therefore concealing the wire inside the spine.
There is a section in my Size|Format|Stock booklet which includes many of the formats for Wire-O binding. If you'd like one, just get in touch.

http://www.jamesburn.com/
http://www.jamesburn.com/home/pages/wireo_binding.html
Posted by Justin Hobson 18.01.2016

Friday 15 January 2016

Debossed Minibooks


The City Works is a London-based brand of urban-themed gifts, stationery and souvenirs, capturing the charming complexity of our towns and cities through intricate illustration.

Through quality craftsmanship and an attention to detail that is pervasive throughout every step of the production process, they utilise only the finest materials and most trusted techniques. Every cityscape is originally drawn by hand and then produced using the best method of reproduction, which in the case of these notebooks is embossing...

Cover on Crush, Lavender 250gsm
These enticing little notebooks are exquisitely de-bossed as the images below show, the detail is truly amazing:
Cover on Crush Coffee, 250gsm
Click on images to enlarge
The covers on these four books are each produced using our Crush range from Favini, the four colours are Lavender, Cherry, Coffee and Olive. Crush is made using made using 15% residues from the industrial processing of agricultural processing. The books have a 48pp text produced on Shiro Tree Free, Cream 90gsm. The books are 143x102mm, portrait and are singer sewn.

Detail of singer sewing (outside):
Detail of singer sewing (internal):
All their trademark ‘Debossed Minibooks’ have individually hand-pressed covers and are hand-sewn in-house. Their mark is beautifully debossed on the reverse.
With thanks to Rowan Ottesen at City Works for sending us these copies. You can find their products at many retailers and they are regulars at many craft markets including the Southbank Centre Strive Festival, Camberwell Arts Market, Renegade Craft Fair.

https://the-city-works.com/
https://justinsamazingworldatfennerpaper.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/crush-from-favini.html

Posted by Justin Hobson 15.01.2016

Tuesday 12 January 2016

Caramel Baby & Child - Autumn/Winter

Eva Karayiannis, founded Caramel Baby & Child in 1999. Originally from Greece, she came to London to study the history of Art at Sotheby's, eventually establishing a business selling and ultimately designing children's clothes. Caramel Baby Child is known for its fresh silhouettes, distinctive colour ways and intricate attention to detail.
 
This is the lookbook for the Autumn/Winter collection. The format is a very simple 16pp broadsheet, which opens easily to read and displays a large poster type area, when fully open.  
Size is 594mm x 420mm  folding to 210x148mm. The birds eye view below should give you the best idea of the format and the way it works.
On the reverse of the concertina is this delightful pattern, creating a calm space without every square inch being crammed with colour photography - a very nice idea.
The paper chosen is our Omnia Natural 120gsm because it would work with the intricate detail that is present in the images but that would give a natural look and tactile feel. It is printed offset litho in four colour process (CMYK) and as you can see from images, some of the images have dark areas, but there is no loss of detail, which is what can often happen printing on an uncoated paper. The neutral shade of the Omnia Natural works just right with these images.

Art direction and design is by the in house studio at Caramel Baby & Child. Designer on the project is Kelsey Hutchinson.
Printing is by Gemini Print, based in Brighton.

http://www.caramel-shop.co.uk/
http://gemini-print.co.uk/
Posted by Justin Hobson 12.01.2016

Thursday 7 January 2016

Shakespeare Schools Festival

The Shakespeare Schools Festival is the UK's largest youth drama festival, offering students from all backgrounds the opportunity to perform Shakespeare on their local professional stage. Alistair Hall and his Clerkenwell studio 'We Made This' was commissioned to create a promotional pack of exercise cards to send out to schools. The brief was "to challenge, support and inspire teachers to inject some SSF style creativity into their classrooms"

They created a stunning box set of hot foil-blocked cards featuring quotes from Shakespeare's plays.
This size of the box (outside dimensions) is 160x222mm and the depth of the box is 16mm. The box is a two piece 'tray and lid'. The cards are all A5 (148x210mm), hot foil blocked and 'round cornered'
Click on images to enlarge
The cards are printed on our Colorset Light Grey, 350gsm (above) which is 100% recycled and the natural kraft colour below is printed on our Plexus 350gsm (below)
Click on images to enlarge
The quotes are set in bold, engaging lettering on the fronts of each card and are beautifully hot foil blocked ...just look at the image below:
Alistair says "the client's response was - They are beautiful! Thank you so much, I couldn't be more pleased" and it was lovely to have that passed on and to receive a file copy and his kind note
The superb execution of the project is by Benwells. They produced all the print, foiling and finishing of the cards - all of which is superlative. Paul Haslam at Benwells oversaw the project.

The exquisite boxes are produced by W. MacCarthy & Sons Ltd, who are based in Woolwich in South London.

This project is a truly outstanding piece of design, typography and print.

http://www.ssf.uk.com/
http://www.wemadethis.co.uk/
http://www.benwells.co.uk/
http://www.maccarthyandsons.com/
Posted by Justin Hobson 07.01.2016

Tuesday 5 January 2016

Jobs from the past - Number 75

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...

Open to Learn - Pearson 2010

Pearson is a company with 150 year old history. Most recently they have been regarded as a publishing company which has now been restructured, becoming the world's largest education company.

Open to Learn is a publication produced at the time of their re-branding, to introduce Pearson as a learning company. Subtitled 'Pearson in Ten Lessons', the introduction is by Dame Marjorie Scardino, who was then CEO of Pearson.
The booklet is an A5 portrait, limp bound with an 8pp cover and a 24pp text (plus a 'throw out') - making it 26pp text.
One of the really interesting facets of this job is that they produced four different coloured covers. Just simply by picking up on the lead colours used throughout the publication. Both the outside covers and the inside of the 8pp covers were changed, two of the colours are shown below...
Below image shows inside front spread:
Click on images to enlarge
The paper used is our Neptune Unique SoftWhite. The cover is 300gsm and text is 155gsm. The choice of paper was particularly important for this publication. As it was being produced by a publisher, it had to have the right 'booky' feel which also meant that an off white shade and uncoated tactile feel was desirable - and as you can see from the design, a coated paper would not have been right.

The below image shows the throw out...
Click on images to enlarge
This project was part of the new Pearson brand identity which was completed by Interbrand in London. The team that worked on the identity is as follows: Creative Directors: Ian Styles/Chris Davenport/ Simon Thompson Design Directors: Ed Bolton/Arielle Breit Copywriter: Chris Davenport Graphic Designers: James Holland/David Lismer. You can read more about this project on the following link:
http://www.coloribus.com/adsarchive/design-casestudy/pearson-pearson-brand-identity-14858105/

Print was managed by Peter Roberts and Emma Dixon from Urban Print Support - who are self styled "print guardians to brand guardians" - they work for many agencies and end clients to bolster their print production knowledge. Print is by Gavin Martin Colournet.
All in all a very well executed project - a really, really well produced piece of literature.

https://www.pearson.com/
http://www.interbrand.com/en
http://www.urbanprintsupport.co.uk/
http://www.gavinmartincolournet.co.uk/
Posted by Justin Hobson 05.01.2016