JAZZ FM

Hold onto your hats! ...this is simply my favourite job from last year - I've been keeping it up my sleeve, so I can write about it at length, so here goes...

This piece of printed literature is an LP sized brochure in a record sleeve, produced for UK based radio station Jazz FM and is a promotional piece of print, aimed at potential advertisers and clients. The mono photography, many from the 1950's by Bob Willoughby and Wiliam Ellis, is beautifully combined with printed metallics (gold & silver) with dense black and surprisingly vivid flat colours.

Brochure (r/h) sliding into sleeve (l/h)



Front cover of brochure


Feast your eyes on the spreads below and then you can read all about it....

The brochure is 305mm square, saddle stitched with a 4pp cover on Omnia 200gsm and a 36pp text on Marazion Ultra 90gsm. The 313mm square sleeve is printed on our Mandricote Cream Back [1 sided] 300gsm. All these materials just work together beautifully. The Mandricote has exactly the right feel for the sleeve (and is a similar material to what would have been used for sleeves, back in the day!) and prints the metallic gold superbly. The whole brochure relies on a lightweight feel to be saddle stitched, maintain the right flow and to slip easily into the sleeve and this is where the Omnia 200gsm cover and lightweight text on 90gsm just works. Printed in CMYK, offset litho, plus special gold and silver.

Design and art direction is by Matt Willey. Described as "sumptuous" by John L. Waters, editor of Eye magazine, who also explains that the two main display typefaces are Engravers and Timmons, a display font drawn by Willey himself (and named after jazz pianist Bobby Timmons).
http://www.eyemagazine.com/blog/post/jazz-in-print

The superb print, production and finishing was handled by John McCormick at printers DG3 Europe, who are a global company with offices in most corners of the world, although this project was handled by the London office.

So why's it my favorite piece from 2012? Few designers (these days) get the opportunity to work with the record sleeve format which was once a pre-eminent format in "popular design" Design for vinyl singles and LP's was a large part of the graphics industry from the 1940's up to 1990's providing a visual narrative of the time but has sadly all but disappeared. By selecting this format, combined with superb art direction and typography, Matt has created a truly stunning piece of literature.

...and if an accolade from me wasn't enough (just kidding) it's been selected by the judges to receive the  “Certificate of Typographic Excellence” by the Type Directors Club, and will also be shown at the 59th Awards Exhibition in New York. Recognition, well deserved.

www.jazzfm.com

www.mattwilley.co.uk
www.jazzbodyandsoul.co.uk
http://tdc.org/
http://www.eyemagazine.com/blog/post/jazz-in-print
www.dg3.com

Posted by Justin Hobson 28.01.2013