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 2008.
Beat IV
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Beat is the regular publication produced by illustration agency Heart. This edition is a fully illustrated edition of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s epic seafaring poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
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| Cover illustration by Jimmy Turrell |
I've taken the following text from the Heart agency website:
"Coleridge is thought to have been inspired to write his metaphysical masterpiece by the tales of the first maritime explorers. The underlying moral of the story is about the power and invisible laws of nature that man disregards at his peril. Whilst today the poem is considered a classic, an archetypal example of early English Romantic literature, when it was first published in 1798 the poem received less than complimentary reviews. Initial sales were put down to sailors, mistakenly thinking it was a book of sea shanties.
The visual power of this poem has, however, proved an enduring inspiration for many artists such as Mervyn Peake, Alexander Calder and David Jones amongst others, with perhaps one of the most well known illustrated versions being Gustav Dore’s engravings of 1870.
In Heart’s approach to the poem a contemporary rendition of a classic has been created, utilising a design inspired by the graphic language of old books".
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| Illustrator: Barry Falls |
Throughout the publication, each illustrator has produced a double-page spread to accompany sections of the poem. The whole publication is printed on our Omnia in the Natural shade. The material was chosen because of it's tactile nature and because the natural shade gave it an "aged" feel. The publication was printed CMYK but predominantly the colour used is blue and the Omnia will reproduce a beautifully solid blue.
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| Illustrator: Luke Best |
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| Illustrator:Tom Gauld |
The size of the publication is 330x235mm, portrait and is section sewn. It has a 4pp cover on Omnia Natural 320gsm, around which there is an 8pp "dust jacket" with 155mm flaps on Omnia Natural 150gsm. The 88pp text is printed on Omnia Natural 200gsm, which is very bulky and gives the book a 13mm spine.
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| Illustrator: Lucinda Rogers |
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| Illustrator: Adam Simpson |
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| Illustrator: Aude Van Ryn |
Beat IV is designed by Pentagram. Partner, Angus Hyland, is design director and designers on the project were Kyle Wheeler and Masumi Briozzo. Print and repro was handled by David Holyday.
Beat 4 was selected for the D&AD Annual, Creative Review’s ‘The Annual’ and won the DesignWeek award for Editorial Design. It is an inspired idea and amazingly well executed piece of literature.
Posted by Justin Hobson 02.10.2013
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