The American School in London

This is a beautifully designed and produced "mini" prospectus for The American School in London. Design is by Powell Allen. Copy by Howard Fletcher is combined with some splendid portraits and photography by the wonderful Phil Sayer.

There is a strange thing about this job which I can't explain. I have just measured it to give the dimensions and was very surprised to find it is 150x210 - or in other words pretty much A5! BUT it just doesn't feel like an A5 job at all - if you had asked me before I measured it I would definitely have said it felt squarer, definitely portrait, but certainly squarer. Looking at it now I wonder if I get that feeling because the dustjacket isn't full height, coming in at only 180mm high? ...maybe - we shall never know!

Anyway, the dustjacket (on which the type is beautifully foiled in Orange and Grey) works very cleverly with the cover images.

Inside, the book is divided in sections by age with the text being on smaller "tipped in" sections (180x130mm) - again maybe this adds to the square feeling?

And now for the paper plug! It is printed on our Neptune Unique FSC , with a 300gsm Cover, 135gsm Text and 120gsm tip in leaves.

Print is by Push

http://www.asl.org/

http://www.powellallen.com/

http://www.philipsayerpartnership.com/

http://www.howardfletcher.co.uk/

http://www.push-print.com/

It's Nice That - Issue 2 - out NOW!

Yes, issue 2 of It's Nice That is out now - and if you pre-ordered your copy, you will also have received your Rob Ryan screenprint as well.

There's some amazing stuff in here, far too much to list but my particular favourite is the "camouflage" by Noma Bar (page 90/91).

Production details are all as my post for Issue#1 (25/06/2009) except for the colour of the Colorset on the cover.

Nice one again Alex and Will!

http://www.itsnicethat.com/

2010 Year Planner

The lovely Anna Fidalgo from Crispin Finn has sent me this excellent 2010 year planner. It is a full 700x1000mm (B1) size and is hand printed, silkscreened in two colours. The planner is produced on our Colorset 100% Recycled 120gsm in White.

It comes beautifully packaged in it's own brown paper bag and closed with a Crispin Finn seal.

A chance to get really organised for next year...

It looks far to nice to put on the wall and write on! ...but I will. Every good design studio should have one of these on the wall next year - and luckily you can, because they are available on the Crispin Finn website!

...and thank you Anna, for the lovely note.

...there's a lovely Tea Towel as well but I haven't got a picture of that yet - a great Christmas present idea!

http://www.crispinfinn.com/

'Mr Álmos' Big Pen Ship'

...nothing to do with paper but I thought this might be of interest:

'Mr Álmos' Big Pen Ship'Illustration Show

From the 22nd - 26th October 2009

The Rag Factory - 16 Heneage Street - London - E1 5LJ

For artists details, other stuff to look at

check out - http://www.bigpenship.blogspot.com/

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)!