McQ AW13

McQ, is a 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 McQ is Sarah Burton and this is the lookbook produced for the collection last year and is simply an exceptional piece of design and print.

The format is A3, portrait. The whole publication is printed on our Astralux 1 sided 115gsm which is exceptionally high gloss on one side and is uncoated on the reverse. The whole design has played with the opposing coated and uncoated printed and plain areas with dramatic effect. Outer cover is completely unprinted.  

It is a 36pp self cover and is unbound, so each of the 4pp section can easily be removed and viewed as an A2 size poster. The monochrome images are reproduced in four colour process (CMYK) printed Offset Litho

Uncoated page on left and coated on right

The remarkable photography is by Roger Deckker. The superb printing on this paper is by Identity Print. One of the tricky things here is to get the consistency of reproduction between the gloss coated side of the sheet and the uncoated reverse. The result is simply stunning. Gloss sometimes faces gloss, sometimes faces uncoated - it plays with the senses.

Gloss coated spread

Uncoated spread

Design and art direction is by Charlie Thomas at Alexander McQueen.

The printing and production is by Identity Print, based in Paddock Wood in Kent and the print quality and repro, in particular is quite simply superb. Thanks to Kevin Appleton at Identity for getting me some file copies.

http://www.alexandermcqueen.com/gb/mcq
http://www.rogerdeckker.com/
www.identityprint.co.uk
www.favini.co.uk

Posted by Justin Hobson 24.04.2014