make

Make is one of the UK's foremost architectural firms who have a host of awards and many iconic buildings to their credit.The practice was founded by Ken Shuttleworth in 2004 and now has studios based in London, Birmingham, Beijing, Hong Kong and offices in the Middle East.

Unusually, Make is a 100 per cent employee-owned organisation with each member of staff sharing in the profits each year which is interesting in a world which appears to be increasingly dominated by "celebrity" architects.

Each year, they produce an Annual which reviews and shows their work of the previous year and this year, I was fortunate enough to be involved with their eighth annual document, showing their work from 2011 and this publication really does show their work, beautifully.

Size of the annual is 275mm square. It is "swiss bound" - if you don't know what that is, see the pic below. Basically the text is perfect bound with a strip of cloth binding tape. The text is attached to the inside back cover parallel with the spine, leaving the spine and cover free to open flat.

Inside spread showing "Swiss binding"

Thomas Clarkson Community College

7th Birthday Party

Fitzrovia development

China sction - Weihai Pavilion

Camden Street Kiosk

Haringey Heartlands section

The Gateway Building

Private London residence

Credits pages

There are several interesting features about this job which are worthy of note. In total there are 140 text pages. The publication is divided into seven sections and there is a different paper used for each section. Most people who know me (reasonably well), know that I have a "three paper rule" so that no job should use more than three different materials ...unless there is a very good reason. This (in my opinion) is because if materials and weights change too much, the whole thing can lose flow and it can ultimately upset the reader. This piece uses six different materials (not all ours) and it really works!

The cover is on our Flora Betulla 350gsm which is printed CMYK and foiled in a matt white foil (the number 8). The other materials used of ours are Flora Betulla, 130gsm, Omnia 120gsm and most impressively of all, our Offenbach Bible 60gsm for the 24pp CHINA section which looks (and feels) amazing.

For the sake of balance, the other materials used (from other people!) are Heaven 42, 135gsm (from Scheufelen), Cyclus Offset 115gsm (ArjoWiggins) and Carnival Yellow 80gsm (Mohawk?)

It was designed and produced by Denise Ryan and Emily Chicken at Make and thank you for sending me a copy and your lovely note:

 
Printing and binding is by Graspo, based in Zlín, Czech  Republic.

www.makearchitects.com
http://www.graspo.com

Posted by Justin Hobson 14.06.2012