...and you think you have a big collection of print!

I've just been reading an article in Printweek by Caroline Archer who's a "print historian". Apparently one of the largest (if not the largest) collections of printed ephemera in the world was collected by John Johnson, printer to the University of Oxford (1925-1946). It is housed in the Bodleian Library and numbers over one million items.

Most importantly this collection is of "jobbing" work such as leaflets, flyers, posters, labels, tickets not books or periodicals - pretty impressive - certainly competition for lots of designers that I know are serial collectors (of stuff)!

Jobs From The Past - Number 1

By their very nature Blogs are concerned with the now and the new. However, several people suggested that I should write about older pieces of work (which is a nice idea) BUT, so I don't fill the blog up with loads of old stuff, I will make the first post of every month a job from the "archive". So this is the first of the "Jobs from the Past" ....

Crafts Council Annual Report 1992/93 "Serving the public"

This beautiful Annual Report was produced in 1993 by Pentagram. Design Director is John Rushworth, the designer is Nick Finney and the photographer is Giles Revell.

The size of the job is 272x348 Portrait and it is a 40pp self cover, saddle stitched. 3,500 copies were printed.

The job is printed Duotone (using two blacks) and is printed on Neptune Unique 135gsm.
This is a really special job, one of those rare times when the quality of the art direction, design, photography, repro, print and material all come together in equal measure. Below are a few of the spreads.....


The job was printed by a company called Penshurst Press based in Tunbridge Wells. Sadly the company is no longer around. Alan Flack who was the printer who actually physically printed this job left Penshurst with Martin Darby to form their own printing company called Principal Colour. Barry Wright who was the Sales Director has left the industry (unless anyone knows differently?) and David Holyday who was the Managing Director still is active in print as a consultant.

This job was written about in Lithoweek printing magazine (27/05/1994) where the richness of the duotones and the use of an uncoated material praised (bear in mind that using uncoated for this type of literature was relatively unusual at this time)

It was around this time that Mohawk and Monadnock (papers both produced in the USA) were starting to make some inroads in to the UK market. The US were well ahead of the UK in terms of using uncoated materials for high quality literature and corporate publications. In 1993 we (at Fenner Paper) started having Neptune Unique manufactured for us in Europe and we were pleased to get this particular order as one of our first (this job wasn't actually the first - that was another job for Pentagram designed by Vince Frost for The Fourth Estate - but that's another story...)

The report was an unqualified success. I received a letter from the Chair at the Crafts Council saying how pleased they were with it and thanking us for our involvement:

...and below is the D&AD 1994 Awards supplement, as this job won a well deserved Silver Award for Annual Reports.
I hope this has been interesting for you reading it. I can tell you that this job still looks and feels fantastic today and bearing in mind it was produced "the old fashioned way" using scanned photographic prints and film to hand made (manually exposed) plates it is amazing - although maybe it's because it was produced that way it has such a great quality.
I have credited those people that were involved as best as I am able:
http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/
http://www.pentagram.co.uk/
http://www.nbstudio.co.uk/
http://www.gilesrevell.com/
http://www.principalcolour.co.uk/
d.holyday@googlemail.com

Justin is a papermaker, as well!

I was going through some stuff last night and found this picture. It's a Polaroid (remember them?!) of me making paper by hand ...back in 1997!

For those unfamiliar with the process, I have dipped my frame which has a wire mesh over it, into the stock (pulp fibres in water) and am attemting to shake it to evenly spread the fibres. I recall this wasn't too successful as I ended up with a sheet of paper that was about 400gsm one end and about 60gsm the other - but you can't say I didn't give it a shot!

This was taken at the old Stora Papyrus Gryksbo mill in Sweden in their hand-made paper studio.

When is BOB! not BOB?

...Just read a very interesting Thought For The Week (TFTW) by Michael Johnson about company naming and the intellectual property of that name. It's well worth a look...
http://www.johnsonbanks.co.uk/thoughtfortheweek/index.php?thoughtid=494

Heart

Many of you will probably have already received this lovely set of promotional pieces from illustration agency HEART. They have produced this series of A4 concertina folded items to

promote illustrators such as Ben Kirchner, Barry Falls and Nick White, both in the UK and USA.

They are all printed on StarFine White 240gsm. Illustration is not always the easiest thing to get right, printing on uncoated materials, but if you've seen these, I think you'll agree, they are really well produced.

Printing and repro is by David Holyday (d.holyday@googlemail.com)

www.heartagency.com

Roksanda Ilincic for Whistles

This is a lovely mailing piece from fashion retailer Whistles.

It is A5 size and the pages are formed by a long perforated concertina which fold into the cover. Printed on Omnia 280gsm.

It is designed "in house" at Whistles by designer Jess Hilton and photography is by Ben Weller.

....and thank you for the flowery note from Jess and Kate which is hand illustrated!

www.whistles.co.uk

The Birds by Paul Farrell

Thank you to Paul for sending me this lovely new collection of cards, all using our Colorset recycled board.

They are not printed (in the traditional sense) but all foiled using coloured foils - this is very interesting as few jobs I see involve printing colour on colour (as I guess designers can be unsure of the outcome) let alone colour foil on colour material.

As part of the London Design Festival, Paul has an exhibition at The Old Sweetshop Gallery (in SW18) which runs until 27th September.

http://www.theoldsweetshop.org/paul_farrell_the_birds_and_the_trees.htm
http://www.paul-farrell.co.uk/