Harry Potter Christmas

This Nordic Christmas card from the Harry Potter Shop at Wizarding World is ready to get you in the holiday spirit!

This stunning greeting card showcases a scarlet red laser cut image layered over a snowy white background. The design features an elegant amalgamation of classical holiday and Wizarding World imagery, from snowflakes and pines to Harry's Patronus. Size is 148x105mm

Printed on Neptune Unique 300gsm, which was chosen after testing the board for lasercutting at the studio. Patternise are based in Slinfold in Sussex, specialising in creative design and laser-cutting services using state of the art laser cutters and they specialise in cutting “clean” materials such as fine papers, cards, and plastics. Printing is by Pureprint based in Uckfield.

It's not too late to buy one for Christmas, here:

https://harrypottershop.co.uk/products/nordic-red-merry-christmas-card

https://www.patternise.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 12.12.2022

Jobs from the past - Number 128

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 this publication is from 2000. 

My Ford Mondeo - Sardinia 2000
This very industrial looking notebook was produced for the Ford Motor Company by Imagination, who have worked for Ford for many years and still do. This notebook was presented to participants of a Ford Mondeo symposium held on the beautiful island of Sardinia.

The book has a deliberately "workshop manual" feel. Size is A5 (148x210mm) Landscape and is wire-o-bound with a silver wire. The covers are produced on our Construction Blackstone 1500mics and the 60pp text is printed on Neptune Unique 170gsm.

The text is printed CMYK throughout and the text in this particular edition is in Hungarian!

The cover is silkscreen printed in three colours, silver, white and dark grey.

If you aren't familiar with Construction Blackstone, it is what is often described as a "millboard". It is produced on a board machine which makes up the board using wet layers of fibres, which is similar to the way Greyboard is produced, but this is not a Greyboard! This is a hard, dense, 100% recycled board with extraordinary rigidity and stiffness. It has a dark grey colour and a very hard surface. The below image shows the recycled, flecky nature of the surface with the Ford logo silkscreened in silver on the outside back cover.

The below image shows a detail of the wiro and the 1.5mm thick covers.

Concept and design is by Imagination. The print, silkscreen and wire-o-binding is by Gavin Martin with Phil Le Monde handling the project ...back in the days when they were based in West Norwood!

https://imagination.com/
https://www.gavinmartincolournet.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 02.07.2020

Jobs from the past - Number 102

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 1997.

4th Estate
New Titles Jan-Aug 97

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 was a one of these very distinctive catalogues. The major difference between this edition and the other catalogues is that this one is A4, portrait, whereas normally they were a more unusual format.

This catalogue is quite simply made up from an artwork of badly made photocopies, which have then been photographed on backgrounds or with appropriate objects.

Click on images to enlarge

The whole publication is printed in just one colour as greyscale - it's worth remembering that this is back in the days when one colour print was significantly cheaper than four color printing. The result is amazingly effective, as I hope you can see from these spreads....

Click on images to enlarge

The 4pp cover is printed on 250gsm and 48pp text on 120gsm. The paper used is our Neptune Unique SoftWhite, which is an uncoated off-white, smooth (yet tactile) text and cover paper - just the right material for black type to look brilliant on.

As you can see from the image below, the 48pp text on the 120gsm sits nice and flat, without 'gaping' in the middle of the book.

The below image shows the spread on the inside back cover, with the credits. Design is by Vince Frost and Derek Samuel at Frost Design in London. Photography is by Glen Erler and printing is by House of Naylor.

So, where is everyone now....

Victoria Barnsley, founder of Fourth Estate, joined Harper Collins as CEO and Publisher in 2000 when it acquired her company. These distinctive publications continued to be commissioned and produced for a few years after becoming part of a larger group. Sadly (and I guess it was just a matter of time) the Fourth Estate became a section within the Harper Collins specialist catalogue.

The House of Naylor went into liquidation in the early 2000's. Vince Frost left for the sunnier climate of Australia in the early 2000's and runs Frost* in Sydney. Derek Samuel worked in London and New York and has returned to his native Australia.

...and Fenner Paper? Yep, we're still here!

Looking through my pristine copies, it still looks and feels fantastic.

http://www.4thestate.co.uk/

http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/about-harpercollins/Imprints/4th_Estate/Pages/4th_Estate.aspx

http://www.frostdesign.com.au/

http://www.dereksamuel.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 03.04.2018

Jobs from the past - Number 97

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...

Design for Life - DixonBaxi 2004
DixonBaxi is the studio established by Simon Dixon and Aporva Baxi in 2001. Having both worked at Attik, they set up their new studio as a partnership, to be just the two of them, working without the trappings of a large agency. Throughout the 2000's, they consistently delivered exciting and innovative design, art direction and branding, predominately for television. Their work for MTV, SciFi Channel, Five and Formula One was high profile and lauded within the industry.

Rather than produce big flashy studio brochure, the two partners deliberately produced a modest portfolio piece to show the work that they had recently produced for clients with a title reflecting their philosophy: design for life

The size is A6 (105x148mm) landscape and is perfect bound with a lovely, neat, square 4mm spine. The cover is printed on StarFine 200gsm, printed in the bright magenta.

The text is made up using "French-folded" sections on Offenbach Bible 50gsm which gives it a sensational light feel and flows beautifully in the hand. 'French Folding' is where the folded edges are on the fore-edge of the book, as in the picture below:

Of course 'french - folding' uses more paper - in fact double the amount! - so this job is actually in conventional terms a 64pp text, which is actually 32x 4pp French folded sections, so in actuality its 128pp! ...but of course it's on 50gsm, so it's only a 4mm spine.

The spreads are sublime, the information pages printed in solid magenta and the project with images from their projects over the previous three years...

Bearing in mind much of the imagery used is from RGB screen grabs, the reproduction is really good, below is the work for MTV...

...and on an introduction spread, no words or image at all - just magenta space!

...you can see the way the text pages rolling and flopping over, flowing superbly.

It was printed offset litho by FS Moore in London and they really made a superb job of it. Richard Davey handled the project and he is now Sales Director at DG3/Leycol.

Design is, of course, by DixonBaxi. Simon and Aporva absolutely loved the finished piece and Simon was kind enough to send me file copies and a handwritten note...

DixonBaxi are now a much larger agency with 30 staff, still headed by Simon and Aporva, so sadly as is the way with bigger studios I no longer have regular contact with the two founders but it's great to have played a small part in the studio's development and history.

http://dixonbaxi.com/
http://www.leycol.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 02.11.2017

Jobs from the past - Number 71

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...

The Wapping Project - 2000

The Wapping Project was, until recently, an arts project housed in the old Wapping Hydraulic Power Station (built 1890). The building originally housed steam operated boilers to generate electricity in the early days of electrification. The works was decommissioned and mothballed in 1977. The building was converted and reopened by the Womens Playhouse Trust (WPT) which is a charity and under the management of Jules Wright, it was opened as an arts centre in October 2000.

Click on images to enlarge

The project included exhibition space in the basement and SHED54, where pieces of original equipment were still in place. On 14th October the bar and restaurant WAPPING FOOD was opened, unusually with an all Australian wine list!

This is the promotional concertina folded leaflet, produced to give the information about events and exhibitions. Size is 225x696mm folding down to a finished size of 225x89mm.

Click on images to enlarge

Many readers of this blog may be unfamiliar with the contents of the panel on the left hand page - the 'reply card' or often 'reply paid card' which was the way that people used to get onto a mailing list before the days of the internet and email! (...and well before QR codes!)

It was printed in CMYK plus a special - a metallic antique gold on one side and one colour gold, reverse. It is printed on our Neptune Unique 160gsm, which has reproduced images superbly.

The superb photography is by John Spinks.from East Photographic. Amazing images.

Art direction and design by Frost in London. Creative director was Vince Frost who now runs Frost in Australia and the designer is Sonya Dyakova, who now runs her own studio in London.

It was printed offset litho by FS Moore in London. Richard Davey handled the project and he is now Sales Director at Leycol.

Sadly the building was sold to developers in 2013 and the project has subsequently closed - a great loss for London and the Wapping area.

http://www.thewappingproject.com/
http://www.frostdesign.com.au/
www.atelierdyakova.com
http://east.co/artists/johnspinks/
http://www.mooreprint.co.uk/
http://www.leycol.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 02.09.2015 

Beat 5



I've been fortunate enough to have been involved in every issue of the Beat series published by illustration agency Heart. Although the size has remained constant, every issue has been quite different whilst providing an exquisite showcase for their illustrators (...as an example, Beat 4 was designed by Angus Hyland's team at  Pentagram and is a fully illustrated edition the Rime of the Ancient Mariner http://www.heartagency.com/beat/4)

Beat 5 is described as a 'double issue' (at 148pp, it is twice the size of previous editions) and as with previous issues it showcases the work of each artist with words providing an insight into their working methods, inspiration, idiosyncrasies and foibles. Beat 5 is edited by Helen Osborne.

http://www.heartagency.com/artist/LaraHarwood/gallery/1

 

http://www.heartagency.com/artist/JimmyTurrell/gallery/1

http://www.heartagency.com/artist/TomGauld/gallery/1

http://www.heartagency.com/artist/AdamSimpson/gallery/1

 

The size of the publication is 330x235mm, portrait and is section sewn. The 4pp cover is on our Matrisse 350gsm, which is incredibly bulky, uncoated and tactile (really suits the illustration by Lara Harwood). The 148pp text is printed on Neptune Unique FSC 135gsm and looks truly amazing! Neptune is smooth uncoated with a dazzlingly white shade and the illustrations have reproduced amazingly (in no small way, due to the printer as well). 

http://www.heartagency.com/artist/MarionDeuchars/gallery/1

http://www.heartagency.com/artist/EdaAkaltun/gallery/1

http://www.heartagency.com/artist/RoderickMills/gallery/1

http://www.heartagency.com/artist/JosieJammet/gallery/1

http://www.heartagency.com/artist/DarrelRees/gallery/1

The beautifully crafted and considered design is by Jason Godfrey of Godfrey Design. Print production and repro is by David Holyday and the printing, which really is exceptional, is by Gavin Martin Colournet.

 

www.heartagency.com

http://www.godfreydesign.co.uk/

d.holyday@googlemail.com

http://www.gavinmartincolournet.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 23.05.2013