Jobs from the past - Number 16

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...

RCA Fashion MA - 2004
This is the show catalogue for the graduating students and is a really lovely piece of literature.

It is an extremely conventional A4 size but that's where conventional starts and stops. The cover uses a plain utilitarian board (our Tridon Greyboard 750mics) which is unprinted save for the type which is hot foil blocked in gloss clear foil. The cover boards are mounted on a false cover which reveals a strip of exposed green bookcloth along the spine. This is commonly (but not universally) called 'Sussex Bound'. The text of the whole book is 'French Folded' - this is where the folded edges are on the foredge of the book, as in the picture below:

The material used for the text is our Offenbach Bible in 60gsm and this piece is a triumph of print (especially fleshtone reproduction) and print finishing. It has 100pp or printed sides (which I would normally describe as 100 x 4pp french folded sections) - this actually makes 200pp but because the other side is unprinted and the ends are bound, each 4pp = 2pp. It's a bit tricky but if you think about it, it makes sense. French folding with a material like Offenbach Bible feels fantastic because the weight of the material lets the pages flop and flow beautifully.

Design and concept was by Larissa Nowicki. Photography by Helga Steppan. The superb repro, printing and finishing was by a company called Trichrom, which sadly doesn't exist anymore. However David Holyday, who produced much of this work for the RCA including this job is still producing print on a consultancy basis. [d.holyday@googlemail.com]

http://www.rca.ac.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 01.02.2011