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 and here's one from 2002.
Fourth Estate Catalogue
July-December 2002
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 commissioned, Bogue & Hopgood, Instinct, Pentagram, 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 a particularly distinctive catalogue, printed in just one colour - white onto a black paper and board...
The effect of printing it onto black paper, means that the edge is a solid black and the white silkscreen ink looks really white and jumps off the page. Below shows the black edge.
The design and art direction is by Vince Frost with the superb illustrations by Marion Deuchars. This is a very special project where the creative direction, excellent execution of the images and high production values all come together.
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The size of the book is 225x160mm, portrait. It has an 8pp cover and a 72pp text. The 8pp cover has full width flaps (148mm wide) which you can see in this birsdseye image here...
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It is printed on our Colorset Nero (100% Recycled) 270gsm and 120gsm. Some of the pages towards the back of the publication are just listings, which again are superbly printed given that it is silkscreen ink, which cannot print as finely as litho.
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Detail showing the quality of the type reproduction:
The spine measures 7mm...
The 120gsm text weight flows really nicely...
Design and art direction is by Vince Frost. Illustrations by Marion Deuchars. The print production was undertaken by Lauren Displays in Ayelsford in Kent and they made a superb job of it.
So, where is everybody now?....
Victoria Barnsley, founder of Fourth Estate, joined Harper Collins as CEO and Publisher in 2000 when it acquired her company, leaving in 2013.
The silkscreen printer, Lauren Displays, have been taken over and are now part of the DS Smith Group.
Marion Deuchars is a very popular illustrator and works through the Heart Agency in London.
Vince Frost left for the sunnier climate of Australia around eighteen years ago and runs Frost* in Sydney.
...and Fenner Paper? ...yep, we're still here!
Posted by Justin Hobson 02.08.2019
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