St Bride Student lecture

Yesterday, I attended a lecture day at St Bride's put on for students which was funded by the Wynkyn de Worde Society Charitable Trust. The speakers at the event were Alistair Hall (from We Made This), Sharon King-Chai (an author-illustrator and book designer) and Chris Bounds (from Carter Wong design). There were around a hundred students from universities around the country. I spoke to some from Kingston, University of the Creative Arts and University of Reading.

Alistair Hall gave a special insight into the way that the Ministry of Stories initiative started followed with an amusing set of anecdotes about the Hoxton Street Monster Supplies - truly this is an example of where design has helped changed people's lives for the better - over a thousand children helped with writing every year.  

Sharon King-Chai spoke about her career, from her arrival in the UK to getting work experience, her work designing album covers and her transition into the world of publishing. One slide in particular struck a note with me ...be nice

Doesn't matter who you are - being nice is the right thing. Even when you have to say NO, you can still do it nicely.

I took a few printed examples to show, to inspire students about the quality print work that is out there and what can be achieved.

It was a very interesting day and I'm sure the students that were there found it inspiring and useful. The print workshop was also open which gave people the opportunity to print some letterpress keepsakes to take home.

If you would like to stir the greymatter, how about going to the Type Tuesday event this evening, run by Eye magazine? The archive evening is hosted by Paul Barnes and there are half a dozen speakers talking about their favourite items found in St Brides. You can read about it here: http://www.eyemagazine.com/blog/post/type-tuesday-archive-night-with-paul-barnes and you can buy tickets from Eventbrite - only £12.00. Go on, get out and feed the brain!

http://www.sbf.org.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 08.03.2016

Your Story Starts Here...

Writer’s Notes is a notebook for writers, containing ‘advice on how to write well from the experts at the Ministry of Stories’. The book was initially commissioned by The Story conference, as a gift to their guests. It is now available for sale in the Hoxton Street Monster Supplies Shop.

The 'experts' who wrote the advice reproduced on the dividers are aged between 9 and 13, and their notes are printed on eight asymmetric dividers throughout the notebook. Here's a bit about the Ministry of Stories:
The Ministry of Stories is a charity that aims to inspire young people through creative writing. Founded by Nick Hornby, Lucy Macnab and Ben Payne, and operating out of the Hoxton Street Monster Supplies shop, they run workshops and provide one to one mentoring to local children.

The finished size of the notebooks is A5 portrait and they are wiro-bound. The covers are 'French folded' (to give a double thickness) on our Flora Betulla 240gsm, which gives it a deliberately 'exercise book/notebook' feel. The eight dividers are all printed (both sides) on different colours of  Colorset 270gsm, distributed throughout 90pp of ruled pages.

Design and production was handled by Burgess Studio. You can read more about the project here:
http://burgess-studio.co.uk/projects/your-story-starts-here/#showhide-info.
Creative director is Alexis Burgess and the designer on the project is Ed Cornish.

This is a truly fantastic piece of printed literature - it has a real WOW factor!

As a charitable organisation, the budget was limited which meant the project was a labour of love which included some of the printing being done in-house! Guillotine cutting and wiro-binding handled by Dash Finishers based in Croydon.

www.thestory.org.uk
www.ministryofstories.org
www.burgess-studio.co.uk
www.dashfinishers.co.uk

Posted by Justin Hobson 27.08.2014