VIP Invitation

This is the beautifully produced invitation for the VIP preview of  thePaddington Square development in west London held at the Chiltern Firehouse.

Size of the invitation is 215mm square and looks stunning.

The square on the front of the invitation is hot foil blocked in Rainbow SHLR from Foilco and the type printed in "Just Black 700" which is one of Foilco’s most popular pigment foils and has a Gloss finish.

The invitation is printed on SUMO, which is our a heavyweight, thick board manufactured by FAVINI in Italy. It is available in black and white and the consists of 1mm, 1.5mm, 2mm up to a whopping 3mm thick ...seriously chunky! Last year, the range was extended to include a small range of colours - five new shades all available in 1mm thick.

This invitation is produced on Sumo, White 2mm thick, which is really substantial and the result is absolutely dead FLAT - unlike the risky business with duplexing boards together which can result in a warped finish...

The hot foil stamping looks superb, sinking into the thick board and giving a wonderful, tactile, quality. 

Design is by property marketing specialists Wordsearch. Designer on the project is Ana Iugulescu and the artworker is Alex Shannon. Printing is by Trident Printing in London.

https://paddingtonsquare.co.uk/

https://www.wordsearch.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 123.12.2023

SUMO - up to 3mm thick!

SUMO is our a heavyweight, thick board manufactured by FAVINI in Italy. It is available in black and white and the consists of 1mm, 1.5mm, 2mm up to a whopping 3mm thick  ...seriously chunky! Originally just in Black and White, the range has now been extended to include a small range of colours - five shades all available in 1mm thick and below is the new lighter weight swatch...

 Size of the swatch is 240x152mm with 10mm spine

Thanks to the dyeing process, the colour distribution is consistent throughout to give excellent results especially when the edge is visible. The finest quality makes Sumo perform excellently for invitations, tags, covers, business cards, luxury POS material and high-end packaging.

The SUMO range is FSC certified. Below shows the five new shades, all available in 1mm thick.

If you would like samples, please drop me an email: justin@fennerpaper.co.uk

https://www.favini.com/gs/en/products/sumo/

Posted by Justin Hobson 13.09.2023

Business Cards for Stefano Marinaz

From its London base, the Stefano Marinaz Landscape Architecture studio works alongside international architects and designers on projects ranging from small private gardens to larger landscapes, and historical restorations to installations for garden festivals.

These are the most beautiful and beautifully produced business cards I have ever had the privilege to write about on this blog!

Stefano Marinaz appointed Mercer Design for a brand refresh, part of which was the design of new business cards, which as many people now identify are the most important piece of print that most businesses produce.

I shall let the words of Stefano Marinaz explain...
If you know me you must also know how keen on plants I am. My passion for the natural world and understanding of plants started when I was very young sharing some special moments with my grandfather in the glass house, he was growing vegetables to be sold in the shop. More than 70 years ago he started a business in Trieste, Italy, where he was selling seeds and plants to professional and amateur growers. As the business developed further my father and my mum became part of “Marinaz Agraria e Giardinaggio” and after almost 40 years of work they managed to expand the company by selling, throughout Italy and abroad, seeds, plants, gardening tools, machinery and everything else that can assist professionals and amateurs in the gardens and in the fields. The seeds have been the core business of my family since the beginning and I am personally fascinated by their beauty and by the fact they are able to generate new life and endless possibilities for us as human beings as well as in my case for designers. Sometime it is important to see things with a closer look and this is why I have chosen the beautiful pictures by Robert Llewellyn to be part of my new business cards.

I selected nine seeds which I found very interesting mainly in relation to the plants they develop. It has been a very enjoyable design process with the fantastic team of Mercer Design

These gilt edged business cards are printed four colour process one side (seed images) and one colour on the face and are also hot foil blocked on the face in a bronze foil (Foilco Ref: 6732). The gilt edging is in a matching bronze colour.

You may be thinking that these 1mm thick cards are duplexed ...but you'd be wrong! They are printed on our Sumo 1mm thick board - so how are they printed I hear you ask? - they are printed flat bed, offset litho by a very clever company called Avenue Litho, based in Hackney, East London.

One of the reasons that this solution was chosen because the client wanted to avoid the card being 'bendy' which is characteristic of duplexed boards. Because Sumo is 'mill laminated' (a process that uses a lot of pressure and very little glue) the moisture balance is not interfered with, which is why the sheet maintains the correct moisture balance and therefore remains flat.

https://www.stefanomarinaz.com/

https://www.mercerdesign.com/

https://www.avenuelitho.com/

https://www.robertllewellyn.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 15.03.2023

Today is James Bond Day

Global James Bond Day is celebrated on the date of the premier of the first Bond movie Dr. No, which premiered on October 5th, 1962...

What better time to review these superb invitations produced for Skyfall, printed on our Sumo and Omnia...

SKYFALL 2012

The James Bond franchise is a global phenomenon and one which over the years has made those involved in the production and marketing a lot of money. However many people may not remember that due to the recession, Bond film number 23 (as Skyfall was then known) was put on hold in 2010 due to lack of cash. Having originally meant to be released in 2011, it was eventually released in October 2012.

Film Premieres of this scale demand lavish and expensive invitations and collateral. In quality terms they must live up to and possibly exceed, the expectations of the forthcoming film.

Below is a small 4pp wallet (with pocket) which is 180mmx107mm, printed offset litho in CMYK plus a gold special colour on Omnia 280gsm with the ticket printed CMYK and hot foil blocked in metallic gold foil on Omnia 280gsm duplexed to 560gsm.  

Click on images to enlarge

The ticket is also hot foil blocked on the reverse.

The launch of this type of film requires several events and these represent tickets for the screenings at The Royal Albert Hall, the Odeon Leicester Square and the after show party at the Tate. As you will notice from the reverse of the wallet (below) the litho printed gold actually looks gold! ..this is a feature of Omnia and where is scores over ordinary uncoated papers.

Below is the ticket for the Odeon Leicester Square which is 99x210mm, Landscape.

The ticket is printed in CMYK plus gloss black foil, which you can hopefully see in the picture below.

This ticket which is also printed on Omnia 280gsm is mounted on our Sumo 2000microns which makes the invitation 2.5mm thick!

Printing is by Identity Print, based in Paddock Wood, Kent and they made a superb job of it - colour reproduction and solids are superb - the hot foil blocking is perfectly executed (Identity are one of the few printers to have hot foil blocking facilities 'in-house')

http://www.identityprint.co.uk/
https://www.007.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 05.10.2022

SUMO from Favini

SUMO is our a heavyweight, thick board manufactured by FAVINI in Italy. It is available in black and white and the consists of 1mm, 1.5mm, 2mm up to a whopping 3mm thick  ...seriously chunky! Originally just in Black and White, the range has now been extended to include a small range of colours - five shades all available in 1mm thick and below is the new lighter weight swatch...

 Size of the swatch is 240x152mm with 10mm spine

Thanks to the dyeing process, the colour distribution is consistent throughout to give excellent results especially when the edge is visible. The finest quality makes Sumo perform excellently for invitations, tags, covers, business cards, luxury POS material and high-end packaging.

The SUMO range is FSC certified. Below shows the five new shades, all available in 1mm thick.

If you would like samples, please drop me an email: justin@fennerpaper.co.uk

http://www.favini.com/gs/en/fine-papers/sumo/features-applications/

Posted by Justin Hobson 12.08.2022

Amazing Cocktail Menu!

Today is World Cocktail Day! ...so what better day than to show you this amazing cocktail menu, which is a stunning piece of paper engineering:

This menu for Scarfes Bar is a highly memorable and interactive piece, featuring 14 music-inspired cocktails.

The menu was illustrated by Gerald Scarfe and based around a Victorian toy theatre with a back drop and moveable wings depicting an empty Scarfes bar. Different types of music are listed on tabs on both sides.

As you pull a tab that relates to a particular genres, so a musician or exponent of that genre glides across the stage into the bar – and the appropriate cocktails are revealed, as you can see below...

The size of the menu is 175x230mm (plus the 10mm tab). The menu is constructed from paper covered over board and each of the menu cards is paper mounted onto our Sumo Black 1mm thick board and the menu pages are held by just four brass binding posts which move along punched slots.

Designed is by Rivington Bye who work with many premium brands, principally in the hospitality sector.

Printing and production is by Fenton Smith at PrintSmith and I can't stress just how well produced this construction is, it really is superb.

What a great day for a cocktail...! https://www.daysoftheyear.com/days/world-cocktail-day/

https://scarfesbar.com/

https://rivingtonbye.com/

https://printsmith.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 13.05.2022

No Time to Die

Unless you are a hermit, you could not have missed the fact that the new James Bond film, No Time to Die was released in the UK yesterday. The release has been delayed for 15 months due to the global pandemic.

What better time to review these superb invitations produced for Skyfall, which as you will read below, was also a movie put on hold, although that was due to the financial recession...

SKYFALL 2012

The James Bond franchise is a global phenomenon and one which over the years has made those involved in the production and marketing a lot of money. However many people may not remember that due to the recession, Bond film number 23 (as Skyfall was then known) was put on hold in 2010 due to lack of cash. Having originally meant to be released in 2011, it was eventually released in October 2012.

Film Premieres of this scale demand lavish and expensive invitations and collateral. In quality terms they must live up to and possibly exceed, the expectations of the forthcoming film.

Below is a small 4pp wallet (with pocket) which is 180mmx107mm, printed offset litho in CMYK plus a gold special colour on Omnia 280gsm with the ticket printed CMYK and hot foil blocked in metallic gold foil on Omnia 280gsm duplexed to 560gsm.  

Click on images to enlarge

The ticket is also hot foil blocked on the reverse.

The launch of this type of film requires several events and these represent tickets for the screenings at The Royal Albert Hall, the Odeon Leicester Square and the after show party at the Tate. As you will notice from the reverse of the wallet (below) the litho printed gold actually looks gold! ..this is a feature of Omnia and where is scores over ordinary uncoated papers.

Below is the ticket for the Odeon Leicester Square which is 99x210mm, Landscape.

The ticket is printed in CMYK plus gloss black foil, which you can hopefully see in the picture below.

This ticket which is also printed on Omnia 280gsm is mounted on our Sumo 2000microns which makes the invitation 2.5mm thick!

Printing is by Identity Print, based in Paddock Wood, Kent and they made a superb job of it - colour reproduction and solids are superb - the hot foil blocking is perfectly executed (Identity are one of the few printers to have hot foil blocking facilities 'in-house')

http://www.identityprint.co.uk/
http://www.007.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 01.10.2021

New A4 sample service launches today!

Very exciting news today!

Some readers of this blog may not even remember the humble Fax machine, but for many years they sat in the corner of the offices and studios of the land, humming away and allowing us to receive communications across the miles, before the internet...

So why am I telling you about these outdated office machines? Well, with the recent updating of the  UK broadband network, increased bandwidth and faster speeds, technology company Looflir PA has developed a program which enables paper samples to be delivered directly via the fax machine to your studio. Not only does this mean you can get your samples straight away, it also saves the environment as we will no longer have to send A4 samples by post or courier...

So now is the time to look out for those old fax machines in store cupboards and under desks and get them plugged in! And the good news is that even though Fenner Paper is the one that partnered with Looflir PA to pioneer this new concept, the new technology will be rolled out to the rest of the industry including other paper merchants and paper mills, which will make receiving samples from other parts of the world much easier.

Above is a sheet of our Colorset 100% Recycled, Bright Red 270gsm arriving on a Samsung machine during testing. Please note that there is a limit to the weights that can be sent and currently we are unable to send anything 1mm or over, so sadly we cannot send our SUMO range.

To sign up for the new service, please email samples@fennerpaper.co.uk and we will send you the relevant information and the download procedure. 

https/looflir.pa

Posted by Justin Hobson 01.04.2021

12.00 - time to reveal that this post is in fact an April Fools joke! hope you enjoyed it

Cheers

Justin

Dark Objects

This is the private view invitation produced for the Huxley-Parlour Gallery. The occasion is the opening of a retrospective exhibition of works by acclaimed American painter Donald Sultan. Spread over two floors of the London gallery, the exhibition includes 17 works produced from 1977 through to 2019. His series ‘Black Lemons’ was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1988, and preceded an in-depth investigation into the reduction of form. 

Size of the invitation is A5 (210x148mm) portrait and is itself an example of reduction of form, being very simply, but beautifully, hot foil blocked on both sides with gloss black foil using our Sumo, Black 1.5mm board.

The below image should give you some idea as to the 'heft' of the board!

Design is by Dan Cottrell Studio based in London and Amsterdam. Superb hot-foil blocking is by the Geoff Neal Group based in Feltham.

https://huxleyparlour.com/

http://www.dcottrell.com/

https://geoffneal.london/

Posted by Justin Hobson 26.03.2021