1973 Letterpress Collection

This is a superb new range of greeting cards from greeting card designer, publisher ...and now printer - Nineteen seventy three!

Based in Brighton, 1973 bought their first Heidelberg press over a year ago and are now in full production with many different designs.

The 4pp cards are 170x120mm, portrait and they are printed on our Colorset 100% Recycled 270gsm in the Natural shade. the Colorset is just perfect for letterpress as it's high bulk and compressibility allows the impression to sink into the board.

Here is a selection from the range. Some are just printed in one colour, although most designs are printed in two colours, sometimes incorporating something unusual such as a fluorescent ink.

...the picture below shows the detail of the card titled 'Paradise letterpressed' and is an ingenious design, printed in 3 colours.

...and the image below shows the texture of the board with the fluoro orange sitting in the Colorset Natural 270gsm beautifully:

You can see the whole range here:
http://nineteenseventythree.com/collections/the-letterpress-collection

www.nineteenseventythree.com

Posted by Justin Hobson 10.10.2014

ISTD Awards Book 2014

The ISTD 2014 awards catalogue perfectly illustrates the awards, the diversity of media and approach and an inspiring overview of international typographic design.

The cover is beautifully hot foil blocked in a combination of white and gloss black foil. The size of the publication is 185x130mm, portrait and is section sewn. The 8pp cover is printed on our Notturno 300gsm (which is our black range from the Cordenons mill in Italy - 90gsm up to 700gsm).

 

The below picture shows the 8pp cover with the 17mm thick spine - 176pp which makes quite a chunky little book.   

The hot foil blocking goes around the outside cover onto the flaps on the inside front and back covers.

The 176pp text is printed on our Omnia, White 150gsm which has reproduced fantastically - giving all the images used to show the award winners a huge amount of detail, while still making a tactile book that feels good in the hand.

It must be difficult to get an awards book like this to hold together in consistent way, showing the wide and diverse work in an interesting way, without it looking too formulaic. This book is well laid out and most readable.

Art direction and design of the awards book is by Playne Design. Designers on the project are Ade Mills, Clare Playne and Andy Scarles.

 

Photography for the awards book is by John Reynolds http://www.clickclickclick.net/

 

The excellent printing, foiling and binding is by Banbury Litho  www.banburylitho.co.uk

 

The awards book is now for sale "A three year snapshot of design (1 May 2011 to 4 June 2014) of work entered from around the world by designers who have used typography as an integral part of their design solution. An inspiring sourcebook of typographic excellence"

The price is only £20  http://www.istd.org.uk/shop/2014-awards-book

 

www.istd.org.uk
www.playnedesign.co.uk

www.banburylitho.co.uk

Posted by Justin Hobson 08.10.2014

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

Jobs from the past - Number 60

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...

Quartet: 27.01.06

This is a stunning piece of literature produced for an event at the museum back in 2006.  Quartet: Four Literary Walks Through The V&A Quartet contains commissioned short stories by Nicholas Royle, Lucy Caldwell, Peter Hobbs and Shiromi Pinto.

Inspired by the V&A and its collections, the four stories in ‘Quartet’ were annotated with directions, mapping the routes described in the writers’ narratives and thus enabling readers to follow the stories as they moved through the museum.

Size of the publication is 307x255mm, portrait. It is totally unbound, just folded and loose, which given the materials just looks and feels right. Matt and Zoë, who were the designers on the project wanted an interaction between the pages which ties in the words with the layout and different floor levels in the museum. They wanted a lightweight material and a high amount of show-through which of course is NOT what our Offenbach Bible does - it has the most amazing opacity for such a lightweight sheet of paper. I suggest the use of a 'high density' black ink or what is soemtimes termed 'double density black' - this is normal ink, except it just has a higher percentage of pigment (colour) so results in a deeper black - thereby ensuring maximum show through - and a nice solid black as well! The picture below shows the way the design and type was structured to work through the paper.

The 4pp cover is printed on StarFine Natural White 200gsm, which is a good match to the shade of the Offenbach Bible. The text is all printed on Offenbach Bible 60gsm.
Below you can see the schematic which links the stories and their position in the museum.

Detail of the schematics:

The routes were also made available as downloads for Sony PlayStation Portable consoles as the show was upported by Sony Playstation

You can read more about the project here:
http://www.mattwilley.co.uk/Quartet-Four-Literary-Walks-Through-The-V-A

Design is by Studio8 where the Creative Directors were Zoë Bather and Matt Willey. Sadly, Studio8 closed in May 2012 and Matt and Zoë now work on their own projects, many of which have also appeared on this blog. This piece of work was awarded both Type Directors Club (TDC53), 2007 Citation for Typographic Excellence and an ADC 86, 2007 Merit (Corporate & Promotional Design)

This piece was printed in two colours, offset litho, by Principal Colour.

www.zoebather.co.uk
www.mattwilley.co.uk
www.principalcolour.co.uk

Posted by Justin Hobson 02.10.2014

Freytag Anderson - Recent projects & insights

Here's a simple but very effective piece of self promotion by Glasgow based studio Freytag Anderson. The mailing arrives in a cellophane bag, with it's contents clearly visible. 



The contents include a 20pp newspaper 380x289mm, which actually is a newspaper, printed on newsprint by Newspaper Club. If you aren't familiar with Newspaper Club, it is a great resource - artwork is uploaded digitally and publications are grouped together and printed at the same time on a large newspaper press. A very economical way of producing print - although there are limitations, such as the small matter of the paper - it's newsprint or newsprint! ...so don't even bother about asking for anything else! There are digital versions available as well for shorter runs. All in all they are a great resource. Newspaper Club are based in Glasgow although they operate globally. You can see them here: http://www.newspaperclub.com/

The A5 portrait, 4pp wrap is printed on Colorset Indigo 270gsm. It is printed using white ink on an HP Indigo press, which is a digital printing press. Some, but not all presses are equiped with the facility for printing white ink.

The white ink is very effective. What is interesting is that because of the way an HP Indigo press works, it can keep on laying pass on pass of white on top, so the density of white ink is contollable and as you can see from this example, it is an excellent result. It was printed by Pureprint.

The combination of a cost effective newspaper and a digitally (but highly innovative) printed piece, provides an economical solution to mass production of printed literature.

The publication is produced by Freytag Anderson. You may remember that back in June I wrote about them on this blog as they had been awarded with four Drum awards including Scottish Design Agency of the Year 2014:
http://justinsamazingworldatfennerpaper.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/award-success-for-freytag-anderson.html.

www.freytaganderson.com
http://www.newspaperclub.com/
www.pureprint.com

Posted by Justin Hobson 30.09.2014

YCN Professional Awards

Yesterday evening I was lucky to be at the YCN Professional Awards party at Shoreditch House...

YCN, which originally launched as the Young Creative Network in 2001 with their renowned student awards has evolved and is now a membership group under the title You Can Now (YCN). The student awards are still alive and well but YCN introduced the Professional Awards which reflected the membership's work and achievements. This year there were 21 awards given.


I was kindly invited by Design by St, who won the 'Design for Print award' for the 26 Characters project, printed using Colorset 120gsm and Offenbach Bible 60gsm and printed by Push. I wrote about this project earlier in the year: http://justinsamazingworldatfennerpaper.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/26-characters.html

L-R above are Stef Bushell, Tom Pollard, Steve Fenn from Design by St and Laura Hunter. Steve is holding the very heavy, shiny, golden and impressive award, pictured below.


http://owenrichards.co.uk/

You can read more about the individual award winners here: http://www.ycn.org/awards/news/906-our-ycn-awards-winners-for-2014

Danny Kirk from Push with Tom Pollard - and below is Danny's face reflected in the award ...a true reflection of his role in the project!

Thanks to Design by St for inviting me, to YCN and Nick Defty for being such excellent and generous hosts and Shoreditch House for providing such an excellent venue.

 

http://www.ycn.org/awards/ycn-awards/2014

https://www.shoreditchhouse.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 25.09.2014

BOLD|CRAZY

This is one of the very best pieces of design and print to have appeared on this blog ...possibly, ever!  BOLD|CRAZY is an internal piece of literature produced for Heineken. Essentially this is a handbook about communication, people and the interconnectivity of social media - about being Bold and less Crazy!

The size of the book is 270x195mm, portrait. It has 152pp on our Omnia, White 120gsm together with 68pp of smaller inserts which are 195x 142mm on Concorde Pure Brilliance 115gsm.

The book is packed full of information and research into the way that brands have handled themselves in certain social media situations - some good and some bad - examples of case studies from which to learn. The way the copywriting works with the design is fantastic and this is a really engaging piece of literature to read.

The content is a bit sensitive which is why there isn't too much on show in these pictures, but hopefully you can get an idea. The top image above, shows 'tip ins' with fantastically accurate line ups, the above image shows the gloss UV varnish over the number 3, which looks amazing. Print is all offset litho with a special orange.

The choice of the papers has worked brilliantly. The Omnia gives the cool greys, flat blacks and vibrant orange a flat mattness (except where the Gloss UV appears) and this contrasts with the smaller size tip in's on the high gloss lightweight paper (Concorde Pure Brilliance 115gsm)

The 'exposed' binding is one of the best examples I have ever seen. Often this type of binding has too much glue (looks ugly) or too little (too loose with threads hanging off) - this looks great and works perfectly.

This picture shows the way the smaller sections works perfectly with the larger sections and haven't distorted the size of the spine.

The front and back hardcovers are 'paper over board' with Omnia 120gsm with a 'Soft Touch Lamination' mounted onto 2500microm greyboard. making a substantial, yet very tactile cover. The words BOLD|CRAZY are hot foil blocked in matt white foil. Another lovely feature is the three orange ribbons.

Design is by the London office of research agency Fabricww. Creative director on the project is Lauren Edwards and designer on the project is Aurélie Delage. Although I can't confess to have read it all, it appears to be a really well researched and written piece of literature.

Print and production is by Richline based in London with Darren Risley handling the production.

Now although I always make a point of being objective on this blog and strive not to 'plug' anyone in particular, this is one of the first projects that I've seen produced by Richline and it really is truly superb - printed beautifully, the binding executed with masterful precision and the whole job has really high production values.

www.fabricww.com
http://www.richline.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 22.09.2012