Crossing the Channel

This is an exhibition catalogue produced for the Gagosian Gallery in London for an exhibition held in the summer and it's just an exquisite piece of literature. The exhibition examines the cross-germination of ideas between London and Paris in the post war years focusing on the work and relationship of three artists, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Alberto Giacometti.

The size of the catalogue is 216x268mm, Portrait. The cover is our Construction Blackstone 1500 micron which works as a "raw" uncovered cover. The title is printed on paper and tipped on to a plate sunk panel on the front cover - really beautiful attention to detail.

The text pages are a combination of Offenbach Bible 60gsm which are 'French Folded' (32pp) and the 'Work'section which is printed on Hello (not ours ...from Robert Horne). The end papers are printed on Omnia Natural 150gsm.

Much of the work is reproduced in four colour black and white and a great deal of effort has been made at repro stage to make these not too colourful, they are very monotone but incredibly rich. Colour seperations are credited as being done by a company called Echelon in Los Angeles.

The image below shows the way in which the binding works - a cloth spine with the Construction Blackstone mounted over the top.

Design and art direction is by Sinéad Madden and it really is a beautifully designed publication. The superb print and finishing is by Beacon Press.

http://www.gagosian.com/

http://www.sinead.de/

http://www.beaconpress.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 16.11.2010

Horrible Logos

Logos for only $5! What a bargain. I've been sent this link by one of my blog readers who thought I'd enjoy this and yes I do. Truly dreadful logos but a truly brilliant idea. Have a look:

http://www.horriblelogos.com/

The site proudly states: "Drawing Bad Logos for beer money, since 2010" and is brilliantly awful. There's one thing which I'm sure a lot of you will appreciate - there are some clients giving feedback on the site who want their money back!

Posted by Justin Hobson 15.11.2010

Whistles A/W 2010

This is another superbly produced lookbook for Whistles - Autumn/Winter 2010

The size is 235x290mm Portrait, saddle stitched. It has a 4pp cover (which is deliberately lightweight) on our Colorset (100% Recycled) Bright Red 120gsm which is printed in just one colour litho (black) with a 28pp text on Marazion Ultra 90gsm, so the whole job has a deliberately 'floppy' feel.

Many of the spreads alternate between CMYK in colour and four colour black and white images, and on some spreads there's even a completely blank page which creates a feeling of space. The background for the shoot is amongst London rooftops and it's a real pity that I can't show all the spreads here as the backdrop of high rise buildings is used to great effect.

Art Direction and design is by Simmonds Ltd. Photography is by Karim Sadli and Styling is by Francesca Burns. Print is by Push.

http://www.whistles.co.uk/
http://www.simmondsltd.com/
http://www.push-print.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 11.11.2010

You saw it here first!

Here is some truly excellent news! In the Summer I wrote about the Central St Martin's MA Communication Design show that I went to and about a few people's work that was very special, including a photographic book on Soviet buildings in Bulgaria. http://justinsamazingworldatfennerpaper.blogspot.com/2010/06/central-st-martins-ma-communication.html

Well,  last week one of those students, Kristina Kostadinova, was in New York at the International Photography Awards competition, otherwise known as the LUCIE awards collecting the  'Discovery of the Year' prize having won the historic/architecture photography award.  

Here are some of the images from her work titled: " AMNESIA; House of Bulgarian Communist Party"

For more information on the work, follow the link:

http://www.photoawards.com/en/Pages/Gallery/zoomwin.php?eid=8-16449-10&uid=62286&code=Historic

And here's Kristina after accepting her award.

Congratulations to Kristina on this fantastic achievement and I look forward to hearing about what she does next and where she goes on to work ...if anyone offers her a job, don't forget where you saw her first!

www.behance.net/kkostadinova

http://luciefoundation.org/

http://www.photoawards.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 10.11.2010

Alga Carta written about in the Financial Times!

A nice surprise last week was to find that Shiro Alga Carta had made it into the Life and Arts column of the Financial Times.

The full article (and recipe) is available on FT.com:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/6528b1bc-e2e0-11df-9735-00144feabdc0.html

The leaflet referred to, reproduces the recipe written by Elizabeth David in December 1969. It has been reprinted by Sally Clarke to celebrate the publication of 'At Elizabeth David's Table' in October 2010 and for the patrons of Clarke's Restaurant in Kensington, where a week is being devoted to recipes inspired by Elizabeth David.

The 132x210mm recipe leaflet was designed and produced by Simon Rendall and printed in two colours on Alga Carta, Avorio 160gsm. The device is illustrated by Jon Gray.

http://www.sallyclarke.com/

http://www.ft.com/

Shiro Alga Carta is a paper manufactured by FAVINI using polluting alga harvested from the Venice lagoon, combined with FSC certified fibres. Algae blooms at the end of Summer in the Venice lagoon as the warm water combines with pollution. The algae must be harvested to maintain the lagoon's eco-balance (circa 5,000 tonnes of wet algae is removed annually). The algae (seaweed) is used partly as pulp replacement but mainly as a filler and this accounts for its unusual smooth feel and the random specks.

http://www.favini.com/

 

Posted by Justin Hobson 09.11.2010

Wrangler Bluebell - Fall/Winter 2010

This is the latest collection from Wrangler's premium men's line  - Blue Bell. As you might expect from their top range, this piece of literature is produced to the highest standard. Art direction, photography and reproduction is superb.

This project was produced in both an A3 format and an A5 format which is a bit ususual and a bit different. They both share the same images and number of text leaves - 24pp and are both singer sewn along the spine with blue thread. The text is printed on our Omnia 150gsm which gives it that dead matt, tactile feel but with great reproduction. Cover is printed on Colorset Nero 270gsm and is hot foil blocked in Blue metallic gloss foil.

Art Direction, design and production is by Studio Thomson. Both jobs have a fantastic feel - it is difficult for me to say too much more about it - see the images below, they speak for the job...

...and here we go for a bit of a plug!  - As you can see from the above images, there are lots of CMYK black areas - loads of ink going down and it looks great on the Omnia - I'm not going to use this a a platform to slag off other products, but there are one or two other papers on the market which people regard as being similar to Omnia - but there is no way that they print dark black images as well as Omnia and retain detail in the dark areas (in my opinion- but I would say that wouldn't I?)

The cover for the A5 version, has the addition of our Monoblack 1400micron board, mounted onto the front and back covers which gives the job a lovely solidity (click on image to enlarge):

Below: a close up of the singer sewing and the Monoblack, mounted on the cover.

The art direction is by Mark and Chris Thomson and the quality of the direction and photography (by Petrovsky & Ramone) is matched by the exceptional printing (and finishing) by Push.

http://www.wrangler-europe.com/

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

Posted by Justin Hobson 05.11.2010

The President speaks - at Noon or Midnight?

Like many of you,  I received an e-mail with an invitation from the D&AD President to join with his asking a question in as many different languages as possible, as follows:

Dear Creative Person. I have a question for you.
In fact, I have a question for every single purveyor of original thought in the world. On 03.11.10 at 12.00pm GMT I will attempt to ask this question in as many languages as humanly possible.
Join me and please accept my invitation at the bottom of this email.
The President of D&AD

THE PRESIDENT SPEAKS TO THE WORLD IN AS MANY LANGUAGES AS POSSIBLE

Location: youtube.com/dandad 
Date: Wednesday 3 November 2010
Time: 12:00PM GMT


Now, I thought this was quite interesting but I also wondered whether it should be 12:00PM or not?  To me it just looked wrong. So I thought I'd have a quick look into it and it seems that there is no definite answer. Because the abbreviations a.m. stands for ante-meridiem (before the Sun has crossed the line) and p.m. for post-meridiem (after the Sun has crossed the line) it causes a problem because at 12 noon, the Sun is at its highest point in the sky and directly over the meridian. It is therefore neither 'ante-' nor 'post-' and it does cause some uncertainty!

Concensus on the web is that to avoid confusion, the correct designation for 12 o'clock is 12 noon or 12 midnight.

Now you know that, get on to YouTube (...at 12 noon) and find out what the message is!
www.youtube.com/dandad 

Posted by Justin Hobson 03.11.2010