What a lovely Christmas gift...

Holmes Wood always come up with a fantastic Christmas present. Last year it was a red shopping bag with "you only get out what you put in" printed on the side.

This year it is a lovely red apron with the witty line "This one went over my head" silkscreened on it ...and although I'm not renowned for my culinary abilities, it may well tempt me into the kitchen more often (maybe being a somelier is more my sort of thing...)

So here I am in the Fenner Paper kitchen complete with my Chefs hat (which isn't very tall, otherwise it would look ridiculous!)

Thank you to all at Holmes Wood, especially Lucy and Ali.

http://www.holmes-wood.com/

An ACE Calendar...

This is a really lovely desk calendar produced by the Central Illustration Agency (CIA). There are 52 illustrations (one per week) and all the illustrations have a "ace" theme.

The job is unusual because although it's printed in four colours, they are four specials as opposed to being normal CMYK. This calendar is printed using a dark blue, and fluoro pink, lime and yellow - with excellent results.

The cover is also hot foil blocked in a white gloss foil - v.nice.
The calendar is printed on our, 100% recycled, Colorset Light Grey 120gsm and the "tent card" (which is the commonly used term for the supporting cardboard frame) is made from a sturdy sheet of Trojan Whiteback 510gsm.The size of the job is 140mm square.

Production (at the CIA) was dealt with by the lovely Jules Beazley. Design is by Staziker Jones and print is by Hartleywilprint based in Wales.

http://www.centralillustration.com/
http://www.stazikerjones.co.uk/
http://www.hartleywilprint.co.uk/

2010 diaries are on the way!

Don't panic! The 2010 diaries are on the way.

We managed to get a small quantity in the post before Christmas, but the majority have not yet gone out. Sadly, because of the snow before Christmas, we were unable to get the printed sheets from the printer to the binders!

However, unless the snow arrives to muck things up again, we are hoping to get them all out in the post tomorrow.

... and here's a sneak preview of the cover designed by Alan Kitching.

Happy new year and best wishes for 2010

Justin

Jobs from the Past - Number 4

Regular followers will know that my first post of every month is a "job from the past" (see posts on 01.10.2009, 01.11.2009 & 01.12.2009) so that I can show some of the memorable jobs from times past, and here's one from back in 2006

This is a poster... Yes, this really is a poster. It was designed by Angus Hyland and Fabian Herrmann at Pentagram for a lecture given by Angus at the University of Plymouth in Spring 2006.

The purpose of the poster which was to publicise the lecture became much more because it made plain the secret desire of all posters ...to be entered into (and win!) design competitions.

The poster was silkscreened in black and white on all 25 different colours of our Colorset 100% Recycled range in 120gsm which we had only just launched. There was a limited run of four copies per colour (100 copies total). It was featured in the June 2006 issue of Creative Review.

I believe that they "liberated" by students, pretty much as soon as they were put up!

The posters were printed by Silkscreen printers called Handprint based in Brighton.

www.pentagram.co.uk

Justin checks out the Rainforests...

Today I went to visit a Sub Tropical Rainforest which forms part of the Springbrook National Park. It is an area of over 6,000 hectares and is strictly controlled and protected.

...it's also the area where they film the "I'm a celebrity, get me out of here!" - if only they'd known I was there!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springbrook_National_Park

Fenner Paper even makes it to OZ!

Today I popped in to the Tourist/visitors centre in "The Rocks" in Sydney to pick up some maps and was absolutely amazed to see a range of cards printed on our material in their shop for sale!

We have supplied our Flockage Litho for this lovely range of greeting cards, called FABRIC, designed by Kelly Hyatt and published in the UK by Beaumonde Cards.

For those not familiar with Flockage Litho it is a flocked paper ...which means it made using fibres and actually has a suede/material feel to it, and incredibly, you can print conventional offset litho onto it - without loss of reproduction - you can print some really detailed stuff - in fact these cards actually have a readable bar code printed on the back!

So there you have it, 10,562 miles away from Tonbridge and I still sniffed out some of our paper!
www.beaumonde-cards.com/product/?pid=3424
http://www.hyattassociates.co.uk/

Roving Report - Frost Design in Sydney.

I've officially made my furthest ever visit ...to Sydney in Australia. Today I popped in to see Frost.

The studio is in an area called Surry Hills and is an entire floor of a really great converted warehouse. It's currently undergoing some renovation work, hence the scaffolding in the pic.

It was good to catch up with Vince, who I used to do a lot of work with, when he was based in London ...sadly it's a bit too far to deliver our paper to Australia!

Some excellent news for Frost is that they have been appointed to reposition South Africa’s leading retail brand "Woolworths" (nothing to do with the old UK variety). They will be implementing and evolving the new identity across all areas including packaging design. As a result Vince is setting up a new studio in Cape Town and is really buzzing about the project and he's only just returned from South Africa last week.

While I was in the studio I had some cookies which were baked in the studio for the Christmas treat!

For those of you that don't know, I'm the tall one...

(thanks to Louis for taking the pic)
And congratulations to Anthony, who was working as Creative Director in London last year, as he has recently become a proud father of a baby boy.


Vince also showed me his new range of T shirts which he has produced in collaboration with photographer Giles Revell who's based in London.

http://www.frostdesign.com.au/

http://www.gilesrevell.com/