Thank you for a thank you!

Earlier today I popped in to deliver some sample sheets that were needed for an urgent presentation to &Smith and was thanked in return by being given some very swanky bottles of a very posh brew!

They kindly put together a pack of beer which had been specially brewed for Coworth Park, a luxury hotel (part of the Dorchester collection) that &Smith did all the branding for ...including the labels on these lovely bottles of beer!

I haven't tried them yet (saving that for the weekend) but it was lovely to receive them from Rachel and Co as a thank you.

Interestingly, the beer is actually brewed at the Red Rat Craft Brewery in Suffolk and as I hadn't heard of them, I had a quick look on google and discovered that it is owned by brewer Kevin McHenry and Tony Hadley of Spandau Ballet fame!

And many congratulations to Anna on getting engaged at the New Year.

http://www.coworthpark.com/
http://www.redratcraftbrewery.co.uk/
http://www.andsmithdesign.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 27.01.2011

Tate Britain Invitations

Following my post about the lovely Gauguin invitations last September for the private view at Tate Modern, here are two equally lovely private view invitations for Tate Britain. Rachel Whiteread Drawings and Eadweard Muybridge. Both were printed on our sturdy Omnia 320gsm and which (as you can see) faithfully reproduces the artists work and of course the solids... 

The invites are A5 size and 2pp. The above pics shows front and back. Designer is Michael Windsor-Ungureanu and the print production is by Push.

http://www.tate.org.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 25.01.2011

Maurice Payne Colourprint founder dies

It was announced in Printweek today that Maurice Payne, founder of Theale, Reading-based Maurice Payne Colourprint, died this weekend (22 January), following a long illness.

He started his career in print in the late 1960s, founding Maurice Payne Colourprint in 1983. During his 27 years at the company he secured a number of firsts, including the UK's first five-colour press (yep, back in those days four colour presses were the norm) and the world's first installation of two 12-colour perfectors.

Although I didn't know Maurice Payne personally, he was certainly a legend in the UK print market. Our sympathies go to his family.

You can read more:
http://www.printweek.com/PrintWeekDaily/News/1051172/Maurice-Payne-Colourprint-founder-dies/?DCMP=EMC-PrintWeekDailyBulletin

http://www.mp-colourprint.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 24.01.2011

Granite Colour goes into Liquidation.

Sad news yesterday, as Printweek reported that Granite, a printing company based in Leigh on Sea in Essex, has gone into Liquidation (in laymans terms that means they've gone bankrupt).

It's very sad news as they have been an excellent quality print company in the design and corporate sector. In fact only last year, they won the award for "Brochure printer of the year" and "Report and Accounts printer of the year". Below are pictured Danny Kirk, Trevor Buck and Mark Shields accepting the awards (Hugh Dennis didn't work for them, he was giving out the awards!)

Last year they bought Good News Press which went badly wrong and ended up with Good News Press going bankrupt in August and being closed down leaving large debts to many suppliers.

I have worked on some very nice projects with Granite in days gone by, including the Rainforest Action Network job which won a Designweek award and other pieces which have appeared on this blog. They were an excellent printers, so I hope that all the staff are able to find new employment and that their suppliers haven't been too badly hit.

If you want to read more about it, here's a link:
http://www.printweek.com/PrintWeekDaily/News/1050166/Granite-Colour-administration-going-concern-sale-close/?DCMP=EMC-PrintWeekDailyBulletin

Posted by Justin Hobson 20.01.2011

CIA Calendar 2011

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 all relate to this years theme "If I were..."

The job is printed in four colours (CMYK) but it's been produced very well given the vibrant reproduction achieved. The cover is printed with a fluorescent pink and is Lasercut on our Astralux [1 sided] 250gsm and is designed by Kai and Sunny.

The 140mm square 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 (below pic):

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/

Posted by Justin Hobson 19.01.2011

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