Ted Baker - Take the Lead

Ted Baker is one of the UK's leading clothing brands. The label has become a desired brand through engaging with customers through the "words of Ted" using interesting themes and stories for its marketing.

Titled "Take the Lead" this publication showcases the Autumn/Winter collection and is set in the auditoriums and backrooms of dance halls and rehearsal rooms.

"From the Mambo and Tango right through to Fandango, Ted can out-Fred then nimblest Astaire and to celebrate, his Menswear and Womenswear collections are dancing cheek to cheek to create a thrilling display of rhythm and electric blues. Ted has choreographed a luxurious Womenswear clothing and accessories collection for Autumn/Winter, effortlessly combining vintage-inspired floral prints in a layered and lavish palette of pinks. His continued love affair with the1950s has also created an ultra-feminine look to ensure all ladies become belles of the (mirror) ball."

This publication is A5 (210x148mm) portrait with 4pp cover and 96pp text and is perfect bound. The book is printed offset litho in four colour process.

The paper used throughout is our lovely Omnia text and cover range - 280gsm for the cover and 120gsm for the text. As you can see from the images, there are dark colours and images with CMYK dark areas (Autumn/Winter colours) - lots of heavy ink coverage going down and it looks great on the Omnia, reproducing those bright vibrant colours, whilst retaining detail in the dark areas as shown in the image below. Flat, matt and tactile. 

Below is the opening spread of the brochure. The inside front and back cover are printed in one colour, offset litho in metallic gold.

Below is detail of the pattern and the great thing about metallic inks on Omnia, is that they actually look metallic!

Click on images to enlarge

Another stunning thing to point out is the detail that is retained in the images, both with the details of the accessories and also fleshtones...

 ...as can be seen with the image of these legs and shoes!

The superb printing is by Absolute Ink who are based in East London. The publication is perfect bound and has a 9mm spine.

Design and art direction is by the in house team at Ted Baker. A superb piece of art direction and design resulting in a superb piece of print.

www.tedbaker.com

http://www.theabsolute.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 11.06.2015

The Story of Fundraising

More Partnership are experts in philanthropic fundraising. They help organisations which are typically charities, universities, museums and schools to be more effective in raising money. As the title of this book reveals, it is about stories, which as they say in the introduction, lie at the heart of persuasive fundraising.

The size of the book is 150mm square, which is a friendly and manageable size. The cover only contains a modest 24pp text (saddle stitched) but to make this more a more substantial piece of literature, it has our Kemikal Cotton White 1500microns mounted to the front and back cover. The spine has been left exposed by 15mm on the front and back cover as can be seen in the picture below.

The cover is on Colorset, 270gsm (100% Recycled) and the 24pp text is printed four colour offset litho and printed on our StarFine Natural White 150gsm.The text paper was chosen because it is a neutral white, uncoated paper, which works in harmony with the cover materials and the beautiful illustrations by Jenny Bowers (Peep Show Collective) which run throughout the book.

There are four different Colorset colours used - just by simply changing the colour of the board used, it suddenly makes a series!

The outside covers are simply silkscreened in one colour black. It works just beautifully on the Kemikal Cotton White which is 1.5mm thick!

The below picture shows the foredge and the overall thickness which is 6mm.

Design is by NB:Studio, where the Creative Directors are Nick Finney and Alan Dye. Designer on the project is Kirsty Whittaker.

 

It has been beautifully printed, silkscreened and finished by Absolute Ink who are based in East London. The cover was silkscreened by Bob Eight Pop, who are part of the Absolute Group.

 

http://www.morepartnership.com/

http://www.nbstudio.co.uk/

http://www.peepshow.org.uk/illustration.php#JennyBowers

http://www.theabsolute.co.uk/

http://www.bobeightpop.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 08.01.2015

Bob Eight Pop

Bob Eight Pop is a small, boutique silkscreen studio based in East London who have been doing work for an impressive list of clients for over thirty years. Clients such as Cartier, Bibliotheque, The Design Museum, Church of London, Matthew Williamson and Airside to name but a few.

Earlier this year Bob Eight Pop (BEP) became part of the Absolute group of companies, a one stop shop for brands and retailers. They develop packaging solutions, print procurement and all manner of services that brands require on a global basis. Regular readers of this blog may remember the lovely Ted Baker SS|2012 lookbook that Absolute printed on our StarFine last year.
http://justinsamazingworldatfennerpaper.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/great-exhibitionist.html

Anyway, Absolute are now running a series of workshops for the brands and customers they work with and they invited me along to BEP last week, to see what was going on. Demonstrations by the printers were followed by an invitation to have a go...

One of the prints pictured below. A particularly poignant quote by Frank Lloyd Wright, which thankfully was printed on our Colorset 100% Recycled paper!

BEP has hand bench equipment and also a carousel for textile printing. Below is one of the invited guests in the studio, creating a unique design on a T shirt.

Company founder  Bob Ellis, (you'll recognise him from the identity pic below) flanked by Andrew Towers (Left) and Gary Elliott (Right) Managing Director of Absolute.

It was a great afternoon, very enlightening and educative ...it was great fun as well as they had laid on beer (brewed literally around the corner) with custom "Absolute" labelling.

Too many people to thank for the invitation, suffice it to say thank you to all and I look forward to trying the beer.

Bob Eight Pop is a really interesting small company. They are half a dozen people with a wealth of knowledge and experience together with a real passion for print.

http://www.bobeightpop.com/

http://www.theabsolute.co.uk/

 

PS in case you were wondering the excellent Bob Eight Pop identity was created by Dry http://www.dry.uk.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 22.07.2013



The Great Exhibitionist

This is the latest campaign from Ted Baker, one of the UK's leading clothing retailers. Renowned for applying clever ideas and twists to its marketing, the company has become a desired designer label through word of mouth rather than just advertising.

This is "The Great Exhibitionist and his Private Views" campaign, launched for this years Spring/Summer collection. This piece of literature is produced to the very highest standard with superb art direction photography, location (the former Royal Naval College in Greenwich) and print reproduction. 

Front Cover with gold foil: 

Inside front cover and Page 1:

First spread showing the fab location:

...and the fabulous clothes, of course:

The new Langley collection, with it's darker photography has worked really well on the StarFine:

This publication was produced in two sizes, 240x330mm portrait format which is just a lovely size and economical out of B1 and a reduced size 202x150mm. Both publications have a 4pp cover and a 72pp text and are perfect bound.

It is printed on our StarFine White, which is an uncoated paper, but as you can see, the reproduction is excellent - both with the solids and the fleshtones. The 300gsm cover is hot foiled blocked in gold metallic foil and the text is printed on 130gsm.

The superb printing is by Absolute Ink who are based in East London. Design and art direction is by the in house team at Ted Baker.

This is how the two sizes look side by side:

You can see more of the campaign here: http://www.tedbakerpromotions.co.uk/lookbooks/uk/ss12/

...and this is how they applied the campaign to the retail outlets (v. clever):

To celebrate the launch of this campaign,  Ted collaborated with a host of acclaimed illustrators to create a digital fashion portrait service called Ted’s Drawing Room, the initiative giving over 100 customers a signed and framed, original, one-off portrait created by one of 11 top illustrators - what a great idea!

You can read more about it here:
http://www.tedbakerblog.com/2012/03/teds-drawing-room-put-yourself-in-a-picture/

All in all, it's a great campaign - look out for it.

www.tedbaker.com

http://www.theabsolute.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 05.04.2012

Gap 1969

This is a lovely promo piece to support the 1969 jeans campaign launch by Gap earlier in the year.

Size is A5, portrait. It has a 4pp cover and a 12pp text, printed CMYK throughout. The text material is printed on Marazion Ultra 115gsm. Cover is from the popular Hull based company on Colourplan 135gsm with a Buckram emboss. The cover also has a gloss UV varnish on the large 1969. It has a deliberately floppy feel which works really well for the denimy subject!

...and here's the clever bit - see below image. The cover means the book works both ways round - one way men/womens, the other kids/baby. Not the first time it's been done but very effectively executed.

Printing is by Absolute Ink who are based in Clapton in London and who work directly with many of the large brands such as GAP. Art director and designer on the project was Jonathan Baron working in conjunction with the in-house production team at Gap.

...and thanks to Jonathan for sending me some copies.

http://www.gap.com/
http://www.studio-baron.com/
http://www.theabsolute.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 04.08.2011