Big Questions...

At the end of last year, King’s College London launched a worldwide development campaign with a sub-brand developed by Johnson Banks called "World questions King's answers".

Rather than the traditional donations campaign, this project poses a series of questions that the world faces, such as How do we cope with an ever-ageing population? What will it take to eradicate poverty? Why can’t we find better treatments for cancer?

The campaign aims to raise funds for new posts and programmes, build new facilities and create new student opportunities across the campuses. Johnson Banks developed a multi-channel campaign, including a booklet, leaflets and gift forms (and they also did a very nice badge!) 

The main booklet is A6 portrait (105x148mm) with a 4pp cover and 16pp text, saddle stitched. Because of the vibrant colours chosen, the material chosen for the job is Omnia (280gsm and 120gsm) which meant that a vibrant punchy result was achieved...

The printed literature demonstrates a well executed project, excellent print and reproduction and finishing on what on the face of it looks to be quite a simple job. But what you might not have spotted is that those white borders around the edge of the solids is only 5mm - you only have to be 1mm out on the finishing on this A6 size piece, for this job to look poor and the copies sent to me are all spot on. Print is by Cantate in Battersea and thanks to Jason Maclaren at Cantate for sending me file copies.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/
http://www.johnsonbanks.co.uk/
http://www.cantate.biz/

Posted by Justin Hobson 07.02.2011

V&A and me

Here's a job which started life with a brief of a single sheet of paper folded in a seemingly random way (for which I was sent a pdf) like this:

Well that's how this amazing job for the V&A started for me. Michael Johnson and the Johnson Banks studio created this idea for display at the V&A museum during the London Design Festival last year. 

Many creatives find the V&A influential, so the idea to create different maps of the museum, based on notable people’s favourite items was conceived. This set of "maps" was devised for the project and ten different creative people were picked. The maps were then displayed on an exhibition stand.

...and this is how they turned out:

Size is A2 (420x594mm) folded to an unmeasurable size! An open example showing the inside:

...and how they are all displayed on the stand:

From a material point of view it was important to select a material which was substantial enough to take a machine crease but which was light enough so that the final fold wasn't too 'springy'. We made several dummies on a variety of different materials and StarFine White 100gsm was selected because it had the right feel and a good opacity.

Print production was by Gavin Martin Associates and so was the excellent print finishing. The complexity of this folding shouldn't be underestimated plus they had to be accurately punched.

Creative Director on the project was Michael Johnson. Senior Designer was Julia Woollams and the placement paper engineer busy folding up sheets of paper for days on end was Bethan Jones.

You can read more about the project and see more pics on the following link:

http://www.johnsonbanks.co.uk/thoughtfortheweek/index.php?thoughtid=601

http://www.vam.ac.uk/
http://www.johnsonbanks.co.uk/
http://www.gavinmartin.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 14.01.2011

Jobs from the Past - Number 9

Regular followers 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 and here's one from nine years ago.

Design Council Annual Review 2001 - Inspire

This was one of the Annual Reviews produced by Johnson Banks for the Design Council which they did for a number of years around the turn of the millennium.

The job is made up using two sizes of text 175x297mm & 210x210mm for the "divider leaves" and it features a "split wiro" on the binding - this is interesting as most people don't realise that you can use different lengths and multiple pieces of wire rather than the conventional continuous piece that is used in most literature.

There are some cracking visual puns and great art direction. Photography is by Philip Gatward and printing is by Gavin Martin Associates.

The job was printed on Neptune Unique using 350gsm for the covers and 200gsm for the text and dividers. As I recall the mono images were printed as halftones and I've just checked under a linen tester and they are! so it is a stunning result - very, very crisp and clean reproduction.

Creative Director was Michael Johnson and the designer was Sarah Dezille (Fullerton as she was then!)

This is a lovely piece of work, thought provoking and really well finished. The literature that Johnson Banks did for the Design Council during this period was of the very highest quality both in terms of creativity and production values. I hope the Design Council are producing literature of the same consistently high quality today.

http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/

http://www.johnsonbanks.co.uk/

http://www.gavinmartin.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 01.06.2010

Ultrabold No7

I have just received my copy of the Autumn edition of Ultrabold magazine, which is the Journal of the St Bride Library - if you don't know about St. Brides - see http://www.stbride.org/

In the past Fenner Paper have supported this publication (by supplying discounted material) although sadly this sponsorship has now come to an end. However this latest edition is certainly worth a mention.

The publication is designed by Simon Loxley and is published by the Friends of St Brides. In this issue, there is a very interesting article by Kath Tudball and Julia Woollams from Johnson Banks about the new "Save the Children" identity (spread below)
There is also a fascinating article about Yulia Brodsakya's designs using the rather forgotten art of "paper rolling" or "quilling" for The Guardian.

Print is sponsored by Principal Colour.
The journal is a 40pp self cover, 190x265mm Portrait and is printed on StarFine White 130gsm

It's worth mentioning that this publication is free to friends of St Bride - so why not look into joining - might be cheaper than just buying the books!

http://www.stbride.org/
http://www.johnsonbanks.co.uk/
http://www.artyulia.com/
http://www.principalcolour.co.uk/

When is BOB! not BOB?

...Just read a very interesting Thought For The Week (TFTW) by Michael Johnson about company naming and the intellectual property of that name. It's well worth a look...
http://www.johnsonbanks.co.uk/thoughtfortheweek/index.php?thoughtid=494

10th V&A Fete 2009

This weekend was the tenth V&A fete and apart from the weather being a bit damp on Friday evening, the weather on Saturday really made it.

There were some fantastic stalls and there was lots to see and do.

As I mentioned in a previous post (17.07.2009) I was asked by the team at Johnson Banks to do a bit of guillotining. Anyway, all can now be revealed! The stall was selling recycled notebooks which were made up using all the old run outs from the last couple of years which they have been hoarding.

Combined with the corrugated packaging, they had also been hoarding and a wiro binding machine, they manufactured these recycled notebooks, which were then rubber stamped - to order.

Here's the set up...

The JB fete team and the rubber stamping table

and here's the tallperson (me) and slightly shorter person (Miho) who coordinated the notebook manufacture at JB.

Thanks to all at Johnson Banks for their hospitality and making me feel so welcome at their stall.

Check out the JB blog , for better pics and copy writing than mine!
http://www.johnsonbanks.co.uk/thoughtfortheweek/index.php?thoughtid=479

I also saw friends from Happily Ever After and Ico Design who both had stalls - I have some lovely badges from Leah at Happily Ever After, which I'll post once Mark has downloaded the images off my phone!

http://www.happily-ever-after.co.uk/
http://www.icodesign.co.uk/

Paper cutting expertise!

I do get some pretty strange requests in this job - but then that's what makes life quite interesting! Anyway, I was asked by the team at Johnson Banks if I could help out with a little bit of cutting using our guillotine. Well it turned out to be slightly more than one or two sheets (more like many thousands!) but we made short work of it using our guillotine that we have for cutting all our samples and dummies. My colleague Mark is pictured above, surrounded by the various sizes.

The sheets are being used by Johnson Banks at their stall at the V&A Fete at the end of next week. Can't say too much about the idea (client confidentiality and all that!) ...but it does involve paper!

http://www.johnsonbanks.co.uk/thoughtfortheweek/index.php?thoughtid=474