Reinventing the Square

This is a superbly produced little book called "Reinventing the Square". It is designed and published by ico Design.

The project was overseen by ico Founder Niall Henry. Creative Director is Ben Tomlinson, Design Director is Vivek Bhatia and the writer is Gerard Ivall.

This publication is about ico's work on the branding of Dolphin Square, a 1930's residential development in London which has been redeveloped over the last few years. The book looks into the branding of the building including the sub-brands: Dolphin House, Dolphin Bar & Grill and Dolphin Fitness Club.

It will be of great interest as a reference source for anyone looking at branding or re-branding a property development.

The book is175x125mm and has 52pp. It is printed on our BrandX FSC 150gsm (this is part FSC virgin fibre and part recycled). The material was chosen so that it would not be bright white and give the historical mono images a period feel whilst still giving a bright vivid reproduction for the new images showing the new brand at work.

Now the really clever production thing about this job is that every spread also folds upwards to reaveal an 8pp "broadsheet" type spread. The spread below then folds up to reveal....
this spread...

It has been very well printed and finished by printers FS Moore. Keith Arnold handled the job at Moores. Bearing in mind that every section has been back to back laminated, it has been done really superbly and certainly my copy is perfect (...as I'm sure they all are!)

The good news is that they have been published with an ISBN number and are available to buy at a very reasonable cover price of £9.99. It's worth buying to see the finishing alone!

http://www.icodesign.co.uk/

http://www.mooreprint.co.uk/

Stella McCartney

This is a stunning lookbook for Stella McCartney's new range of sports clothing for Adidas.

Design is by Made Thought.

The job is 230x163mm Portrait and is 72pp and is printed on Omnia 200gsm and 120gsm.

As you will see from the spreads below, the photography (by Tim Barber) really conveys energy and style. Even though the book is divided into eight sporting sections, the design creates lots of space and an uncluttered feel.

The repro, print and finishing is also amazing - by Push. They have made very best of these excellent shots making the printed images really alive and working incredibly well with the substrate.

The finishing requires a special mention. It has an "open" section sewn binding. This is where the book is finished as a conventional section sewn block but glue is applied without the "text block" being placed into a cover. This gives an interesting and unusual effect, which I have seen before but not as well executed as on this job.

...and here are some close ups of the binding:


http://www.adidas.com/campaigns/stellaSS09/content/index.asp?strCountry_adidascom=uk
www.push-print.com

www.madethought.com

...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