Do I push Push?

Over the past few months I've had a couple of people ask me if I have some sort of "tie-up" or "special realationship" with London based printer, Push. So I thought I'd take the opportunity to explain what the score is!

I am happy to have a very good working relationship with the people at Push but not necessarily any better than many other printers that we work with and I know we aren't anywhere close to being their biggest supplier. "So why is their work always appearing on this blog?" I hear you ask. Well the truth is, they do produce nice work BUT the most important factor is they take the time and trouble to send me file copies when they have used our papers.

Generally speaking, a designer that I've been working on a project with, will send me some file copies (as you witness here on this blog) for which I'm very grateful. However, sometimes I find out about work done using our paper by accident or a casual "oh yes, we used your stuff on that job a couple of months ago" or even when I get told "I threw away that box of file copies printed on your stuff, just last week" (...Tom - you know who you are!).

So here's an example of what Push do: A nice note from Emma, sent to me with some file copies...

This particular job is a series of five invitations for the Royal Overseas League (ROSL) annual Scholars Exhibition. They are 406x288mm folding down to 203x144mm, printed CMYK and are really excellent printed samples on our Redeem 100% Recycled 70gsm

This was followed up a few weeks later with another note with some file copies of the catalogue:

The catalogue shows the work of the five artists and very cleverly utilises each individual printed (bound) section as a section for each artist. This is done by having a section sewn text with "open" binding. What has been cleverly devised with this piece is by mounting the text to the inside back cover of a loose 4pp cover (in a similar way that "swiss binding" works), it has protected the open binding and gives the catalogue an added degree of interest. Each of the colours on the introduction page match up with the individual sections.

Size is 143x205mm. 4pp cover is on Redeem 100% Recycled 240gsm and the 88pp text is on Redeem 70gsm. Designing a catalogue for an exhibition showing such a wide variety of work from different artists is not an easy task but designer Joseph Pochodzaj has made a really excellent job of this publication.

So, that brings me to the end of this piece about whether I push Push!  I write this blog to showcase the projects that use our papers and inevitably I can only write about projects if I actually know about them. So to the people that mentioned about me pushing a particular printer - Stop ya moaning, use some of our papers and most importantly, send me some copies!

http://www.roslarts.org.uk/
http://www.joepochodzaj.com/
http://www.push-print.com/
PS - Thanks to Emma at Push for sending me the file copies.

Posted by Justin Hobson 18.01.2011

V&A and me

Here's a job which started life with a brief of a single sheet of paper folded in a seemingly random way (for which I was sent a pdf) like this:

Well that's how this amazing job for the V&A started for me. Michael Johnson and the Johnson Banks studio created this idea for display at the V&A museum during the London Design Festival last year. 

Many creatives find the V&A influential, so the idea to create different maps of the museum, based on notable people’s favourite items was conceived. This set of "maps" was devised for the project and ten different creative people were picked. The maps were then displayed on an exhibition stand.

...and this is how they turned out:

Size is A2 (420x594mm) folded to an unmeasurable size! An open example showing the inside:

...and how they are all displayed on the stand:

From a material point of view it was important to select a material which was substantial enough to take a machine crease but which was light enough so that the final fold wasn't too 'springy'. We made several dummies on a variety of different materials and StarFine White 100gsm was selected because it had the right feel and a good opacity.

Print production was by Gavin Martin Associates and so was the excellent print finishing. The complexity of this folding shouldn't be underestimated plus they had to be accurately punched.

Creative Director on the project was Michael Johnson. Senior Designer was Julia Woollams and the placement paper engineer busy folding up sheets of paper for days on end was Bethan Jones.

You can read more about the project and see more pics on the following link:

http://www.johnsonbanks.co.uk/thoughtfortheweek/index.php?thoughtid=601

http://www.vam.ac.uk/
http://www.johnsonbanks.co.uk/
http://www.gavinmartin.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 14.01.2011

The Rule Book

When someone is made a Freeman of the City of London they are presented with a small book entiltled: Rules for the Conduct of Life. This book was written by a former Lord Mayor, Sir John Barnard (circa 1740).

St Lawrence Jewry is the official Church of the City of London Corporation and ArthurSteenHorneAdamson were commissioned to produce a new design for the publication of this modern version.

Although there is only one book, they produced a series of eleven different coloured dustjackets (8pp) which wrap around the "real" 4pp cover and which makes a set. Each dustjacket is titled differently referring to a particular rule inside. The dustjackets are tint layed, printed in CMYK all on Colorset White 120gsm. The generic 4pp cover is on Colorset Bright Red 270gsm and hot foil blocked in gold metallic foil. The 64pp text (which looks beautiful) is printed on Offenbach Bible 60gsm.  The text was printed as CMY and used PANTONE black 3U as the 4th colour to get the crispest text. The text was printed in four colour, not because there are any pictures or illustrations, the text is all in crisp black and red, but there are some divider pages between sections which again are tint layed solids - they adjusted on press the mix for the divider pages to closely match the dustjackets. The size is A6 portrait. A well thought out and very cost effective solution.

Design is by AthurSteenHorneAdamson. Creative director is Marksteen Adamson, designer was Joe Hole and the project manager was Katy Hudson. The excellent print and production, including foiling, is by R.Young and Sons, based in Croydon. They are one of the few printers who have their own hot foiling machinery.

Although this may seem like a very old fashioned set of rules, they are amazingly pertinent to today's life. Rule 24 looks like it was especially written for me: "If you are very busy, don't panic: sort out the priorities and do one thing at a time". Easy to say, not so easy to do!

http://www.ashawebsite.com/

www.ryoungprint.com

Posted by Justin Hobson 12.01.2011

SV Two Digital in Liquidation

It was reported in Printweek last week, that London-based Digital printer SV Two Digital has gone into liquidation less than six months after its litho sister company (Quantum Print UK) but which traded as SV2, closed. The printer, based in Beckenham has gone into liquidation owing more than £1million (wowee!) to creditors and with 12 jobs lost.

Many people in the design community will have known the SV2 name and the personalities behind the company, William Fletcher, Duncan Summers, Nicolas Ide and Rob Phillips.

You can read more...
http://www.printweek.com/News/1047977/SV-Two-Digital-liquidation/?DCMP=ILC-SEARCH
http://www.printweek.com/News/1049487/SV-Two-firms-collapse-2010-casualties-continue-mount/?DCMP=ILC-SEARCH

Posted by Justin Hobson 11.01.2011

I saw three ships come sailing by...

Here's one of the lovely pieces that I received at Christmas. Printed on Offenbach Bible 60gsm. To tie in with the ships theme, each of three ships is printed in a different colour, it is printed offset litho - and the colours are overprinted which also creates the effect of more colours.

Fenner Paper also supplied the snazzy C5 envelopes as well!

Overprinting (colour on top of another colour) was commonplace back in the days of letterpress, and when creating colours out of CMYK was very expensive. However it's a process which is rather forgotten nowadays - probably because it's nigh on impossible to create digitally and the results can only be seen on the press when it's actually being printed. Many people would wrongly assume that it's been printed silkscreen - but you wouldn't get the effect because (in general) Litho inks are transparent and silkscreen inks are opaque.

Design is by Maddison Graphic based in Ely and litho printing is by Identity in Paddock Wood in Kent.

http://www.madisongraphic.com/
http://www.identityprint.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 10.01.2011

The new It's Nice That...

Just received the January Newsletter about the tweaks on the "It's Nice That" site including the new listings section ...check it out: http://www.itsnicethat.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 06.01.2011

Jobs from the past - Number 15

Happy New Year!

Followers of this blog will know that my first post of every month is a "job from the past" so that I can show some of the really good work from years gone by. ...here's the first post for 2011.

Merchant Handbook - 2002

Merchant is the corporate reporting arm of global PR firm Brunswick. In the 1990's years they used to produce a report called the Merchant Handbook, showing FTSE listed companies and which agency did their reporting and who printed it etc. - it used to be quite interesting reading. By the 2000's the burden of collating this information was too great and the Merchant Handbook became a yearly publication of relevant articles about reporting, CSR and investor relations.

At that time Merchant managed the production and design and used a collection of independent studios to do the creative work. This report was designed by NB:Studio.

The report contains articles on six different subjects and each one forms it's own booklet. Each booklet is designed in a completely different style, either purely typographic, illustrative image based etc. and to emphasise the difference, each booklet is on a different material. Some are printed CMYK, some 2 colour and 1 colour plus silkscreen.

Each individual booklet was saddle stitched and they were then 'double-sided' to each other (back to front covers) along the spines only allowing each booklet to open freely but giving the appearance of a neatly stacked pile of different booklets from the front. The overall size of the job is 225x280mm portrait (cover size) with a 14mm spine.

The materials used were Episiode IV 115gsm, Alga Carta 90gsm, Millennium Real Art 170gsm, Dali Neve 160gsm, Neptune Unique 135gsm, Appledawn Cream Velvet 150gsm, some of which are now defunct.

One of the crucial factors that contibuted to the success of the job was the selection of the board for the cover. Being a 4pp cover but with a parallel creased 'freestanding' spine and all the weight being stuck into the inside back cover, it needed to be a substantial piece of board. Our Aerographic Twin 500gsm was used with a gloss lamination on the outside cover and it really works.

Creative directors on the project at NB: Studio were the three partners (Nick, Ben and Alan) and the designer was Nick Vincent. This is just a lovely piece of printed literature - it is extremely engaging. However from memory I don't think it was nominated or won any awards which was a shame and a bit of a surprise. The  2003 Handbook (also designed by NB) was nominated for illustration at D&AD and was also on our paper, so maybe I'll write about that some other time!

The publication was produced under Managing Director, Robert Moser's watchful eyes and the project was managed by Leonie Dixon. Russell Thompson oversaw the print production and finishing (most importantly) of the job which was printed by Impressions in Wimbledon, who (like many printers from that era) don't exist anymore.

So where are they all now? Russell Thompson is production director at Merchant, Nick and Alan remain at the eponymous NB:Studio (http://www.nbstudio.co.uk/), Ben Stott now works independently on his own projects (http://www.benstott.com/) and  Nick Vincent set up his own studio (http://www.vincentdesign.co.uk/) ...oh, and I'm still at Fenner Paper!

http://www.merchant.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 04.01.2011