My World of Charms

This is a lovely little publication produced by Links of London for their popular range of charms and charm bracelets. Titled My World of Charms it is a small 'handbag' size of 110mm square. The book has a 4pp cover with a 60pp text and is perfect bound. There are also 2 reverse folded insert pages which are printed on a self adhesive paper, so you can create your own charms and then attach them to one of the illustrated bracelets.

Our very bright Colorset Magenta 270gsm is used for the cover to great effect and you certainly can't miss it! The cover is hot foil blocked with a matt white foil.

The text pages are printed on Marazion Ultra 115gsm with the natural, flat mattness which works both with the jewellery and the illustrated pages...

Lovely illustrations by Maiko Nagao:

Illustration, over a double page spread, divider page:

and here are the little "kiss-cut" self adhesive stickers...

Designer on the project (and the fab illustration) is Maiko Nagao working in-house at Links. Printing, including the foiling and self adhesive stickers is by Pureprint. All in all a really lovely little book.

www.linksoflondon.com

www.pureprint.com

www.maikonagao.com

Posted by Justin Hobson 17.05.2011

Blog posts have gone missing!

Unfortunately e-blogger has had a problem and about three or four of my posts from last week have disappeared! Unfortunately because it's an online system, I don't hold any back ups, so hopefully they'll be able to restore them shortly - Sorry!

Whistles S/S 2011

This is the latest Spring Summer lookbook for fashion retailer Whistles.

The size is 235x290mm Portrait, saddle stitched. It has a 4pp cover (which is deliberately lightweight) on our Colorset (100% Recycled) Light Blue 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.

As with the previous issue, there is lovely sense of light and space with this piece with some spreads having a completely blank page on left or right. It really allows the superb photography and the subject room to breathe. The brochure is printed in one colour (cover) and CMYK for the text.

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

Print is by Boss based in West London - incidentally their press, which is a Heidelberg CD 74-6LX is fitted with an inking/blanket/impression cylinder washup device - which (in theory) means "hickey" free printing ...impressive stuff! (and interesting in a sort of nerdy way!)

NOTE - Added 26.10.2011. Following my visit to Heidelberg UK, I've found out that this system is called a Vario Dampening System and here's how it works: "Vario operation reduces the formation of hickeys on the printing plate due to a differential speed from the dampening form roller to the plate. The reduced speed is attained by the separately driven distributor roller spinning around 12% slower" ...very clever stuff.  Thanks to Paul Chamberlain at Heidelberg (www.uk.heidelberg.com) and Fenton Smith at Boss for explaining it all to me.

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

http://www.simmondsltd.com/
http://www.bossprint.com

Posted by Justin Hobson 05.05.2010

Jobs from the past - Number 19

Regular 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 one from 2006...


RIBA - Crown Estate Conservation Award 2006

The Crown Estate Conservation Award is made to the architects of the best work of conservation which demonstrates successful restoration of an architecturally significant building. The shortlist is selected from the conservation schemes to have won RIBA Awards in that year. The £5000 prize is the most prestigious in conservation architecture and was established in 1998 with The Crown Estate sponsoring it since that year.

The 2005 award was won by Avanti Architects for the conservation of the iconic Grade I listed Isokon apartments in London, NW3 and that is the (superb) image used on the cover of the 2006 awards booklet.

This is not a big flashy job. It's purpose is simply to list the five shortlisted entries. The flat size is 297x315mm folding up to form a 12pp A6 finished size piece. Nothing too elaborate, just functional, well designed and printed. The paper chosen for the job was our Neptune Unique 120gsm. Reproduction is good and it folded well.

Design is by The Small Back Room based in London and the designer on the project was Phillip Southgate (who has since moved and now lives and works near Bristol). Printing was by Crucial Colour based in Tunbridge Wells. The image below shows the 12pp folded out with a folded version placed in the middle:

...and there's even a small piece of personal interest in the job (for me anyway!). One of the projects (also by Avanti Architects) shortlisted for this award, was the restoration of a Grade II listed modernist house called Harbour Meadow in Birdham.  Originally designed by Peter Moro and Richard Llewelyn Davies in the late 1930s, this was actually built for the grandparents of one of my friends from school - a little known fact is that Peter Moro was interned during the war not least because he was of German descent but also because intelligence officers claimed that the recently constructed house, if viewed from the air, resembled half a Swastika and could be used for navigation by Nazi bombers! Mr. Tawse vouched for him and also persuaded the authorities that the aerial 'half swastika' was a ridiculous idea and the architect was finally released in 1941. You can see more of this house: http://www.avantiarchitects.co.uk/#/proj_9


Harbour Meadow, Birdham

Photo: Nick Kane

RIBA: http://www.architecture.com/

http://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/

http://www.avantiarchitects.co.uk/

http://www.smallbackroom.com/

http://www.phillipsouthgate.co.uk/

http://www.crucialcolour.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 03.05.2011

Royal Wedding Day

Contrary to popular belief (and my april fool post) I won't actually be at the wedding today! However, to celebrate, I thought I would share this extremely collectable plate titled "cheers for the day off" by El Famoso Illustration!

Congratulations to the happy couple....

http://www.richfairhead.co.uk/

http://www.elfamoso.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 29.04.2011

Pentawards 2011

Now you don't see much about pacakging on this blog, because apart from a few pieces of quite specialist stuff, we aren't really involved in mainstream packaging.  However, I thought it would be worth drawing you attention to an international competition called the Pentawards ( ...no, nothing to do with Pentagram!)

Pentawards is the first and (apparently) only worldwide competition exclusively devoted to packaging design in all its forms. It is open to everybody in all countries who are associated with the creation and marketing of packaging. The winners receive bronze, silver, gold, platinum or diamond Pentawards according to the creative quality of their work.
2011 entry is open up to the 20th of May. You can read more at:  http://www.pentawards.org/

Posted by Justin Hobson 28.04.2011

Mad Hen - Case Study

This publication is the first in a series of "case studies" published by design company Mad Hen, who are based in Wales.

This case study is about Halen Môn Sea Salt which over the last decade has built up a profile as a premium, gourmet product.

The booklet is a saddle stitched, 12pp self cover, A6 (148x105mm) portrait produced on Omnia 150gsm.

Design is by Creative Director Sid Madge at Mad Hen. Omnia was chosen because the colour reproduction is superb as are the solids combined with the fact that this little job just feels 'special' - and as Sid says in his lovely note to me:  Omnia ...Yum!

It does occur to me that this is a great way of a design company getting it's own work out there. I know that these days, the emphasis is very much on websites but you still need to give a client a reason for looking at a site and a simple, clear precise publication like this is just the thing ...food for thought!
http://www.halenmon.com/
http://www.madhen.uk.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 26.04.2011