Excellent re-use of our sample packaging

I was VERY pleased to find out that our packaging (large corrugated box) that we use to send our B1 samples out in has been successfully utilised as a fancy dress outfit.

Richard Rhodes from London design studio VERY, used it as the basis for his VERY "Special K" outfit for a party at the weekend.

The party was themed on two letters, either K or M and apparently someone else went as a box of Maltesers! JP at VERY went as Mozart, with wig and all.

Well done for keeping up the creative standards amongst London's partygoers! ...but a bit worried about the longjohns!

www.specialk.co.uk

www.kelloggs.com

www.verystudio.net

ISTD Awards 2009

I was lucky enough to go to the ISTD awards last Friday and it was a great evening. It was held at the Arts Club in London's Mayfair. As with all ISTD events, there is a real air of friendliness and fellowship, whether this is because there is always an international element, I don't know. I was seated at a table with people from Holland (http://www.studiovanson.com/) who were a great laugh.

The series of three posters below is the ISTD Awards 2009 Overall Winner by Paris based, Studio Apeloig (www.apeloig.com)

All award winners deserve congratulations, but in particular, there are some people who I must mention:

Cartlidge Levene for the wayfinding & environmental graphics for The Guardian building - (I know it's not on paper, but it's still fantastic work!) http://www.cartlidgelevene.co.uk/

Barrie Tullett and Philippa Wood who are lecturers at University of Lincoln and who run The Caseroom Press for The Ghost in the Fog (pictured left).

This is a book that only contains the corrections and alterations of the author.

Congratulations on their Premier award (by the way, it's printed on our Offenbach Bible 60gsm)

http://www.the-case.co.uk/

NB:Studio won a Certificate of Excellence for their series of House magazines for Soho House, the covers of which are below: http://www.nbstudio.co.uk/

...and the list goes on - The Chase for their marvellous woodblock letters made from chocolate, Studio 8 for FUTU magazine and Henrik and Scott from A2/SW/HK for a clutch of awards.
http://www.thechase.co.uk/

http://www.studio8design.co.uk/

http://www.a2swhk.co.uk/

Here's a very cheerful looking Paulus M. Dreibholz, happy with his well deserved Certificate of Excellence for the poster for the Institute of Architecture in Vienna.

http://www.gaffadesign.com/

Malcolm Garrett (http://www.appliedinformationgroup.com/) and David Coates (http://www.tothepoint.co.uk/), lurking behind the scenes!

...and a prize for anyone who can guess which dark horse from the NB:Studio table this is (answers on a nice postcard please!)
It was an excellent evening which showed a fantastic array of international typographic excellence. It is REALLY important for our industry that we retain societies such as the ISTD and we must take every opportunity to try and encourage membership, thus ensuring their continued viability.

So if you aren't a member, have a look http://www.istd.org.uk/ - for less than £10 per month - this is good value!

A talented Illustrator - Ciara Phelan

I just received an e-mail from a talented new designer/illustrator, Ciara Phelan. She has recently gone freelance, based in London.

Although we've never met, I like her work! Have a look: www.iamciara.co.uk.

Invitation to a wine tasting...

This is an example of a beautifully executed invitation done by an agency in Edinburgh that I work with called Touch.

It's A5 in size and just very simply foiled in two colours on our Monoblack 1400mics (...yes that's nearly 1.5mm thick!) Lovely typography and foiled to a very high satandard by IST printing services in Ayrshire.

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

www.penfolds.com

www.thetouchagency.co.uk

www.istprintingservices.co.uk

Back on the grid

I just wanted to welcome Chris Wigan back to the UK. Chris took a year off and has been working and travelling South America, where apparently the steak is pretty good!

Chris is well know for being the creative behind ‘Change the World for a Fiver’ and ‘I’m Not A Plastic Bag’ whilst a partner at Antidote. I first worked with Chris at Johnson Banks, then at Circus, Antidote and most recently at Dave.

He's now the new creative director at ethical communications agency Provokateur, have a look...
http://www.provokateur.com/e/1/index.html

Fashion Rations!

This is a really fun piece of internal communications for fashion retailer, Whistles. They run a scheme where staff members can offer a limited "friends and family" discount. They coined the phrase "fashion rations" and decided to produce some ration book style booklets in a small "ladies purse" size.

Importantly, they wanted the pages of "stamps" to be perforated and on a gummed paper. Well many of you won't know that we keep a gummed paper in stock at Fenner Paper called Novafix (and are the UK distributors for Swedish manufacturer Artinova).

To complete the ration book feel, the booklets were "stab stitched" (that's where the staple goes through the whole book, from front to back - like a cheque book - although the term cheque book binding normally implies, the application of binding tape over the stab stitches).

The size of the book is A7 (105x74mm) portrait, with Idaho Blu Sky, 216gsm for cover with 3 leaves of perforated stamp pages on Novafix white 80gsm.

A particularly nice touch is that the front of all the books are "crash numbered" on the covers. For those of you who aren't aware of this process, it is an old letterpress process which uses a numbering box on a platten. It is an "impact" process which simply thumps the number on the sheet and then (in a clockwork style) clicks on one digit.

Print production was done by PrintStation, based in Bexhill in Sussex (carole@print-station.biz).

The job was designed in house at Whistles by Jess Hilton ...thank you Jess for the nice note.

http://www.whistles.co.uk/

What a lovely surprise!

I've just had a lovely surprise this morning. Not only have I received a letter (that's not just a dig at the post office, it's just that in this e-mail age, I hardly ever receive a proper letter these days) but it's also a really nice thank you letter!

It turns out that we supplied one of our materials (called Kapok) to Richard Harnasz, who is a student at LCC (School of Printing and Publishing) and this, in part, helped him on his achievement of winning the 2009 Printweek Student of the Year award!

http://www.printweek.com/news/945968/

I wrote about the Printweek awards (see post 20.10.2009) but hadn't realised that Richard had won the Student award. Anyway, congratulations on the award Richard and thank you for taking the time and trouble to write.

richard.thewatchthisspaceco@gmail.com