ISTD 90th Anniversary

Yesterday evening I was lucky enough to be invited to the 90th anniversary celebration International Society of Typographic Designers (ISTD) awards held at the wonderful De La Warr pavilion in Bexhill on Sea, East Sussex. It was a wonderful evening at this amazing location.

The De La Warr pavilion is a modernist building by the architects Erich Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff which opened in 1936. The enlightened town council opened this new space which was to provide culture and entertainment for the masses – a true people‘s palace.

The evening started with drinks on the rooftop terrace, which was delightful as it was a beautiful evening.

The anniversary dinner was held in the dining area on the second floor, where over a hundred members and guests gathered, including some members coming from as far as Canada.

The wonderful restaurant area has the most amazing panoramic windows looking out to sea, a really perfect backdrop.

The evening began with an introduction by Jonathan Doney, the Chair of ISTD who gave a brief re-cap of the society's history, founded 90 years ago by Vincent Steer who brought together six other like-minded colleagues, for the first meeting of the British Typographers Guild, held at an Italian restaurant in Holborn, London. Jonathan reminded us of the work of the ISTD, including the Student awards which has been running for 45 years and now with programmes in six countries!

After dinner, Andy Altmann, one of the co-founders of Why Not Associates gave a very amusing talk about the influences on his career from the humble Ladybird books, his scrapbooks, to Eric Gill and Why Not's early life as a studio in Soho, shortly after leaving the RCA.

A very special moment in the evening was the award made to Freda Sack (pictured below). Freda was made an Honorary Fellow of the ISTD in recognition of her significant contribution to the Society and the typographic industry. Freda has been a member for over 30 years and has held pretty much every position on the board. Freda managed to achieve this while also running her own successful business.

It was an excellent evening which demonstrated real warmth and friendliness which the world of typography appears to engender. 

 It is so important for the design industry that we nurture and retain organisations such as the ISTD and we must take every opportunity to try and encourage membership, thus ensuring their continued viability. ...and if you aren't a member, have a look http://www.istd.org.uk/- it costs less than £10 per month - which is excellent value! 

Congratulations to the ISTD Board and the events team for arranging an excellent 90th Anniversary -- a huge amount of time and work goes into these events and it is fair that they should be recognised and applauded. 

www.istd.org.uk 

www.dlwp.com 

Posted by Justin Hobson 29.06.2018

ISTD Awards 2014

On Friday evening I was lucky enough to be at the International Society of Typographic Designers (ISTD) awards held at the wonderful De La Warr pavilion in Bexhill on Sea. It was a wonderful evening at this amazing location. The De La Warr pavilion is a modernist building by the architects Erich Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff which opened in 1936. The enlightened town council opened this new space which was to provide culture and entertainment for the masses – a people‘s palace.

Following renovation in 2005, the pavilion hosts many shows, exhibitions and cultural events. On Saturday their new Magnum exhibition just opened:  http://www.dlwp.com/event/magnum-photos-one-archive-three-views

The evening started with drinks on the rooftop terrace, which was delightful as it was a beautiful evening.

Stewart Drew

We were welcomed by Stewart Drew, Director and CEO of the De La Warr Pavilion, who explained why they were so pleased to be part of the ISTD awards and to have an association with the society - they also hosted the judging in June.

As with all ISTD events, there is a real warmth and friendliness, which may be because of the international dimension or maybe the society just attracts the nice people in the world!

The dinner and awards was held in the wonderful restaurant with the panoramic windows looking out to sea.

These international awards attracted entries from 25 countries across a wide range of graphic design disciplines. In total there were 84 certificates of excellence and 20 premier awards made - awarded for outstanding typographic achievement. Although, not everyone could make it the awards, there were many people who had travelled long distances, including Wing Lau from Australia and Astrid Stavro together with Pablo Martin from Design by Atlas in Spain, who left laden with awards!

Bryan Edmondson from Sea, collecting a Premier Award (for Pencil to Pixel/Monotype exhibition) 

Andy Altmann (Why Not Assoc)

This year was the highest number of awards made, but this reflected the far higher number of entries. For the first time the Overall Winner was a joint award, going to MM Koehn for a book titled Eros Und Thanatos and Why Not Associates for their 'Comedy Carpet' in Blackpool in collaboration with artist Gordon Young.

http://whynotassociates.com/recent-work-2/the-comedy-carpet/the-work

All the award winners deserve congratulations and it was lovely to see some projects which had been produced on Fenner Paper materials, particularly Air W1 by dn&co, which I've featured on this blog and which was awarded a certificate of excellence:
http://justinsamazingworldatfennerpaper.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/airw1.html

It was an excellent evening which showed a fantastic array of international typographic design excellence. It is SO important for the design industry that we retain organisations such as the ISTD and we must take every opportunity to try and encourage membership, thus ensuring their continued viability.  ...and if you aren't a member, have a look http://www.istd.org.uk/- it costs less than £10 per month - excellent value!

Congratulations to the awards team: David Coates, Belinda Magee, Clare Playne and Freda Sack - a huge amount of time and work goes into these events and it is fair that they should be recognised and applauded. The awards catalogue perfectly illustrates the awards, the diversity of media and approach and an inspiring overview of international typographic design - and I shall write about that next!

The results are now all online here: http://www.istd.org.uk/awards/awards-results

www.istd.org.uk
www.dlwp.com
www.playnedesign.co.uk

Posted by Justin Hobson 06.10.2014

Sad demise of The Colourhouse

On Friday, Printweek reported that The Colourhouse, a London based printing company, has gone into liquidation (in laymans terms that means they've gone bankrupt).

http://www.printweek.com/print-week/news/1140263/runs-colourhouse

It's very sad news as they have been an excellent quality print company in the design and corporate sector. Over the years, they won many printing awards and accolades, including many PrintWeek and Printing World awards as well as a fair share of the various paper company awards that used to take place in the 90's

The Colourhouse was started in 1993 and it's beginnings, certainly were colourful! In the  1980/1990's there was a printer called Litho-Tech based in Bermondsey Street and they were among the printing elite, along with such names as CTD, Oakley Press, Balding & Mansell, Summerhall Press, Westerham Press etc. that were producing really excellent print for the corporate print market, notably design lead, Annual Report & Accounts.

In 1993 a vacant unit opposite Litho-Tech came up for lease and there was much speculation as to who would be moving in. The power was connected, there were rumours that a printers was moving in, but little did Paul Watson (MD of Litho-Tech) realise that it was some of his staff that would walk across the yard and set up The Colourhouse from a standing start!

Scotty (Malcolm Cooper), the owner of repro company Scott Colour (which produced Litho-Tech's repro, film and plates) production director Terry Rudd and salesman David May formed the backbone of the new company which started printing virtually immediately. The Colourhouse quickly gained a reputation for high quality print and produced many annual reports. Litho-Tech who were not happy with their new neighbours, moved to Kennington Park and The Colourhouse ruled Bermondsey for the remainder of the 90's.

David May was ousted in 1997 with Mike Roberts and David Arkell taking over responsibility for sales. Having outgrown the factory in Bermondsey they moved to Deptford in 2002 and expanded with more presses, finishing equipment and a bigger sales force.

In the late 2000's, they commissioned a new identity by Sea with photography by Simon Phipps. Further investments in press technology culminated at the end of last year with a brand new  Heidelberg Speedmaster XL106 being installed. In line with many commercial printers, they have seen tough times in recent years and also had the misfortune of having taken a sizeable bad debt last year with the collapse of a charity marketing agency, CSDM.

Nearly one hundred jobs have been lost which is terrible for all those involved and there will be a long list of creditors who will never be paid. It marks the sad demise of one of the last, large, London based printers.

http://www.printweek.com/print-week/news/1140263/runs-colourhouse

 

Posted by Justin Hobson 04.11.2013

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to everyone and especially those that are regular readers of this blog. I hope 2012 will be a peaceful year. In the UK, it should be an exciting one with the Olympics being hosted in London and various locations around the whole country. Whatever some people's misgivings, I think that it will be a great event that will be held in the public consciousness for years to come.

Last year, at the DesignWeek awards, I bumped into Bryan Edmondson from SEA. He was kind enough to give some encouraging words about this blog and mentioned that it would be a great idea if I invited other people to occasionally write for it as well.

www.seadesign.co.uk

Having mulled it over (for some considerable time!) I've decided to introduce a "SOAPBOX" piece. Written by an invited contributor, it will be published on the blog at the end of the month (in the same way that "Jobs from the past" is the first post of every month). The piece doesn't have to be about any particular subject, other than it should be of relevance to the type of designers who are interested to read this blog (...also, it can't be libelous, slanderous or defamatory!)

Anyway, that's my new year resolution, so as the idea was his I'll ask Bryan if he'd like to write the first one, otherwise I might have to start ringing around!
Happy 2012.
Justin

Posted by Justin Hobson 04.01.2012 

Paper is still the medium!

I popped in to Sea Design last week.

Unfortunately Bryan Edmondson was tied up in a meeting, so couldn't join us, but he sent down a note with one of the guys - which is loads better than somone just saying "...oh Bryan says hi"

and it goes to prove that paper is still a fantastic medium (even though I am writing this on a blog!)

Anyway, thanks Bryan ...and keep up the good work for GF Smith!

www.seadesign.co.uk