Sad demise of The Colourhouse

On Friday, Printweek reported that The Colourhouse, a London based printing company, has gone into liquidation (in laymans terms that means they've gone bankrupt).

http://www.printweek.com/print-week/news/1140263/runs-colourhouse

It's very sad news as they have been an excellent quality print company in the design and corporate sector. Over the years, they won many printing awards and accolades, including many PrintWeek and Printing World awards as well as a fair share of the various paper company awards that used to take place in the 90's

The Colourhouse was started in 1993 and it's beginnings, certainly were colourful! In the  1980/1990's there was a printer called Litho-Tech based in Bermondsey Street and they were among the printing elite, along with such names as CTD, Oakley Press, Balding & Mansell, Summerhall Press, Westerham Press etc. that were producing really excellent print for the corporate print market, notably design lead, Annual Report & Accounts.

In 1993 a vacant unit opposite Litho-Tech came up for lease and there was much speculation as to who would be moving in. The power was connected, there were rumours that a printers was moving in, but little did Paul Watson (MD of Litho-Tech) realise that it was some of his staff that would walk across the yard and set up The Colourhouse from a standing start!

Scotty (Malcolm Cooper), the owner of repro company Scott Colour (which produced Litho-Tech's repro, film and plates) production director Terry Rudd and salesman David May formed the backbone of the new company which started printing virtually immediately. The Colourhouse quickly gained a reputation for high quality print and produced many annual reports. Litho-Tech who were not happy with their new neighbours, moved to Kennington Park and The Colourhouse ruled Bermondsey for the remainder of the 90's.

David May was ousted in 1997 with Mike Roberts and David Arkell taking over responsibility for sales. Having outgrown the factory in Bermondsey they moved to Deptford in 2002 and expanded with more presses, finishing equipment and a bigger sales force.

In the late 2000's, they commissioned a new identity by Sea with photography by Simon Phipps. Further investments in press technology culminated at the end of last year with a brand new  Heidelberg Speedmaster XL106 being installed. In line with many commercial printers, they have seen tough times in recent years and also had the misfortune of having taken a sizeable bad debt last year with the collapse of a charity marketing agency, CSDM.

Nearly one hundred jobs have been lost which is terrible for all those involved and there will be a long list of creditors who will never be paid. It marks the sad demise of one of the last, large, London based printers.

http://www.printweek.com/print-week/news/1140263/runs-colourhouse

 

Posted by Justin Hobson 04.11.2013

Jobs from the past - Number 32

Regular 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...

The Fourth Estate Catalogue 

July-December 2003

The Fourth Estate is a publishers that many people will be familiar with. Founded by Victoria Barnsley in 1984, Fourth Estate built a reputation as one of the most innovative and eclectic imprints in the industry, with a reputation for publishing a wide variety of critically-acclaimed and beautifully-produced titles including many prize winning authors (Booker, Orange etc).

One of the things that made the Fourth Estate stand out from the crowd was their catalogues - they were simply amazing pieces of design and print! I was lucky enough to work on a few different catalogues in the late 90's and early 2000's. Every single one was different and brilliant. Good designers were comissioned, Bogue & Hopgood, Instinct, Rose Design, Frost, Neville Brody, Tom Hingston to name a few. In line with their reputation for publishing unconventional yet innovative titles, the design of the catalogue was equally eclectic.

This is one of the last catalogues I was involved with, designed by Tom Hingston Studio.
Here's the comment from Tom Hingston's website: "For our design of the Fourth Estate July-December 2003 catalogue we took inspiration from the aesthetic of an authors manuscript. This gave us the opportunity to explore the use of type as image, to illustrate each title in a way we felt appropriate for a books catalogue"

The size of the book is 150x215mm, portrait. It is casebound (hardback). The book is divided into two sections, new releases 1-32pp and the remainder 33-56pp. The papers used are both lightweight. The first section is of the catalogue is printed on Redeem 100% Recycled FTP 90gsm and the second section on Myriad Colours Yellow, 80gsm. End papers are on Episode IV 115gsm. The cover is covered with self coloured bookcloth and foiled (beautifully) in black foil.

Detail

Design director is Tom Hingston, designer on the project was Manuela Wyss.
The job was printed in two colours by Wisbech based printers Balding & Mansell, who are now sadly defunct.

Victoria Barnsley, founder of Fourth Estate, joined Harper Collins as CEO and Publisher in 2000 when it acquired her company ( ...she did well!). These distinctive publications continued to be commissioned and produced for a few years after becoming part of a larger group. Sadly (and I guess it was just a matter of time) the Fourth Estate became a section within the homogenised Harper Collins catalogue and the individual publications ceased.

http://www.4thestate.co.uk/

http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/about-harpercollins/Imprints/4th_Estate/Pages/4th_Estate.aspx

www.hingston.net

Posted by Justin Hobson 06.06.2012