YCN Professional Awards

Yesterday evening I was lucky to be at the YCN Professional Awards party at Shoreditch House...

YCN, which originally launched as the Young Creative Network in 2001 with their renowned student awards has evolved and is now a membership group under the title You Can Now (YCN). The student awards are still alive and well but YCN introduced the Professional Awards which reflected the membership's work and achievements. This year there were 21 awards given.


I was kindly invited by Design by St, who won the 'Design for Print award' for the 26 Characters project, printed using Colorset 120gsm and Offenbach Bible 60gsm and printed by Push. I wrote about this project earlier in the year: http://justinsamazingworldatfennerpaper.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/26-characters.html

L-R above are Stef Bushell, Tom Pollard, Steve Fenn from Design by St and Laura Hunter. Steve is holding the very heavy, shiny, golden and impressive award, pictured below.


http://owenrichards.co.uk/

You can read more about the individual award winners here: http://www.ycn.org/awards/news/906-our-ycn-awards-winners-for-2014

Danny Kirk from Push with Tom Pollard - and below is Danny's face reflected in the award ...a true reflection of his role in the project!

Thanks to Design by St for inviting me, to YCN and Nick Defty for being such excellent and generous hosts and Shoreditch House for providing such an excellent venue.

 

http://www.ycn.org/awards/ycn-awards/2014

https://www.shoreditchhouse.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 25.09.2014

Caesarstone - Design Inspirations

This is a striking look-book for stone company Caesarstone, a brand that is an innovative pioneer of quartz surfaces. They collaborated with trend forecasters FranklinTill to edit and design this inaugural publication which shows a curated selection of stones and materials and the possibilities for the future.

The book is a casebound (hardback) book, which is "Quarter bound" (that is the way to describe the bookcloth which wraps around the spine). Size of the publication is 280x220mm, portrait and has a 64pp text. The cover paper is printed CMYK on Omnia 150gsm and is hot foil blocked in matt grey foil with a Colorado cloth in grey around the spine. The text is also printed on Omnia throughout.

The slightly unusual thing to mention about the text is that it is sewn in sections, but each section is made up using 12pp of Omnia 150gsm with a 4pp section on 200gsm wrapped around the 12pp, making a 16pp section in total. The purpose of the heavier 4pp weight is to provide "divider" sections, on which colour palette is printed. The other thing to add is the 200gsm pages are printed CMYK plus a gloss UV varnish over the colour palette areas (below)

Omnia was chosen for this project because the nature of the stone surfaces required a tactile material, without any loss of detail in the reproduction. As you can see from these pictures, there's loads of ink going down and it looks great on the Omnia, reproducing bright vibrant colours as well and keeping all the detail in the darker images, especially the smaller detail shots below ...and of course, Omnia is one of the very few papers with an uncoated look and feel that you can successfully use with UV varnish in one pass and get a great result.

This is an exquisitely produced piece of literature, the design, photography, print and binding being of the highest quality.

The research, editing and design is by FranklinTill. Creative directors are Kate Franklin and Caroline Till and the designers on the project are Laura Gordon and Graham Tait.

The superb print is by Push, handled by Danny Kirk.

 

www.caesarstone.com

www.franklintill.com

http://www.push-print.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 28.03.2014

Mother of Pearl

 

Maia Norman is the Creative Director at Mother of Pearl and each season, she works with an acclaimed artist. Previous collaborators include Polly Morgan, Francesco Simeti, Gary Hume, Fiona Banner, Keith Tyson, Jim Lambie, Matt Collishaw and Carsten Holler. This last season, Amy Powney, the head designer at Mother of Pearl collaborated with New York based artist Fred Tomaselli to produce their collection and this is their beautifully produced lookbook.

The size is 260 x 185mm, portrait, perfect bound with an 8pp cover and a 40pp text. It is printed on our Omnia and has a 8pp cover on 280gsm and a 40pp text on 150gsm. Omnia is an extremely bulky sheet, so this has a solid, chunky, feel. It is printed offset litho, CMYK throughout, with the small M monogram being hoy foil blocked in gold foil on the outside front cover.

...and here we go for the plug about the paper! - As you can see from the images, there is lots of colour and detail in the images with CMYK dark areas - loads of ink going down and it looks great on the Omnia, reproducing bright vibrant colours as well and keeping all the detail in the darker images, epecially the little detail shots below...

Original design concept is by William Hall with the artwork being produced 'in house' at Mother of Pearl. Photography is by Robert Wyatt.

The superb print is by Push ...and thanks to Danny Kirk at Push for sending me some file copies.


http://www.motherofpearl.co.uk/
www.williamhall.co.uk
www.robertwyatt.net
http://www.push-print.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 17.05.2013