PEEL Limited Edition Book

‘PEEL’ is an exploration of self-identity. As a reaction to the scrutiny young people undergo through social media, Marksteen Adamson created the PEEL programme which works with groups of young people and uses photography and poetry to help them explore their identity and who they are rather than just focussing on what they look like. Social media, self-expression and self-identity present growing problems for young people, and there is growing evidence that this pressure is contributing more and more to mental health issues.

Launched in 2017, the project is the culmination of a three-year study, that has acted as the foundation and prototype for the training programme. The PEEL project has been developed into curriculum based resources to enable educators and service providers to run the programme.

This limited edition book comprises 30 studies, each with their own unique poem and photographic portrait and containing the latest statistics. Size is A5 (210x148mm) portrait has 114pp of text (plus the throw outs) in a 'casebound' cover and section sewn binding.

Click on images to enlarge

The amazing thing about this book is that each of the 30 case studies is printed across a right handed 'throw out' in the book.

The book is printed Offset Litho on GardaPat 13, Klassica 115gsm. For readers not familiar with GardaPat 13, it's a fully coated paper but it really does have a dead flat MATT surface. There are many papers on the market which profess to be matt - some which incorporate the word matt in the name, but aren't! Apart from the high quality matt surface, this paper has an extraordinarily high bulk (thickness).

It is hard to describe the 'dead flat' mattness that is a characteristic of this coated paper but the print result is totally flat as you might see in the below images...

Click on images to enlarge

Gardapat Klassica is a pale ivory shade and is perfect for colour reproduction as well as the solid colour and metallic gold used for the statistic section...

The reproduction and printing is excellent and does the superb photography justice, however the feature that is most amazing about this book is the attention to detail in the binding - it is simply incredible.

If you look at the above image showing the foredge of the book, it looks perfectly even, in fact it's flawless - but then consider that 30pages of this book are throwouts! It is points of a millimetre perfect!

The inside sewing is perfect as you can see in the image below...

...and the spine is equally as perfect.

Marksteen Adamson is co-founder of Cheltenham marketing and brand agency ASHA. Design of the book is by the team at ASHA with designers Scott McGuffie, Simon Dryland, Emily Kane and Hannah Mapleston.

The superb print and even more exceptional binding is by Fenton at PrintSmith. A truly amazing piece of print and binding.

https://projectpeel.org/

https://ashaandco.uk/

https://www.printsmith.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 20.11.2020

The Rule Book

When someone is made a Freeman of the City of London they are presented with a small book entiltled: Rules for the Conduct of Life. This book was written by a former Lord Mayor, Sir John Barnard (circa 1740).

St Lawrence Jewry is the official Church of the City of London Corporation and ArthurSteenHorneAdamson were commissioned to produce a new design for the publication of this modern version.

Although there is only one book, they produced a series of eleven different coloured dustjackets (8pp) which wrap around the "real" 4pp cover and which makes a set. Each dustjacket is titled differently referring to a particular rule inside. The dustjackets are tint layed, printed in CMYK all on Colorset White 120gsm. The generic 4pp cover is on Colorset Bright Red 270gsm and hot foil blocked in gold metallic foil. The 64pp text (which looks beautiful) is printed on Offenbach Bible 60gsm.  The text was printed as CMY and used PANTONE black 3U as the 4th colour to get the crispest text. The text was printed in four colour, not because there are any pictures or illustrations, the text is all in crisp black and red, but there are some divider pages between sections which again are tint layed solids - they adjusted on press the mix for the divider pages to closely match the dustjackets. The size is A6 portrait. A well thought out and very cost effective solution.

Design is by AthurSteenHorneAdamson. Creative director is Marksteen Adamson, designer was Joe Hole and the project manager was Katy Hudson. The excellent print and production, including foiling, is by R.Young and Sons, based in Croydon. They are one of the few printers who have their own hot foiling machinery.

Although this may seem like a very old fashioned set of rules, they are amazingly pertinent to today's life. Rule 24 looks like it was especially written for me: "If you are very busy, don't panic: sort out the priorities and do one thing at a time". Easy to say, not so easy to do!

http://www.ashawebsite.com/

www.ryoungprint.com

Posted by Justin Hobson 12.01.2011