New Press at Push

Regular readers of this blog will know that apart from some beautifully printed work demonstrated on this blog, there isn't very much good news in the printing industry. Many companies have simply gone bankrupt Midas Press, Good News Press, SV2, Moores, to name but a few, so positive news is hard to come by.

However last week, I popped in to London printer Push who are in the middle of installing a brand spanking new B1 Heidelberg Press (a CX102) ...and below are the pics of installation in action.

This represents an extremely big investment but demonstrates that if a company wants to continually improve quality and keep up with the latest technology, it must invest.

Good luck and good printing!

www.push-print.co.uk

www.uk.heidelberg.com

Posted by Justin Hobson 21.11.2011

Morgan McKinley

This is an excellent example of a corporate brochure. It is beautifully designed, with innovative print and finishing features and is produced to a very high standard.

Morgan McKinley are a company working in the global professional recruitment industry and this corporate brochure is to give a company overview to potential clients.

Hot foil blocking in gloss black foil together with matt red foil features on the front cover and on the endpapers, gloss UV varnish used to great effect, below.

The publication is 215x280mm, Landscape, perfect bound. It has a 4pp cover, 2x2pp endpapers (front and back) and a 28pp text printed on our Omnia 150gsm - which as you can see from the mono photography and the flat solid areas of red and black, have given this job an amazing mattness and tactility.

Design is by Glazer. Creative director on the project is Jonathan Wybrow. Print and finishing is by Gavin Martin.

One final word ...how lovely to see an outstandingly produced corporate brochure that doesn't rely on stock photography, bright four colour work and glossy paper - it looks great.

www.morganmckinley.com

www.glazer.co.uk

www.gavinmartincolournet.co.uk

BSME Art Director of the Year 2011

Simon Esterson

Last week, at the British Society of Magazine Editors awards, Simon Esterson, editor of Eye Magazine won Art Director of the year (Business publications). Congratulations to Simon and the whole team at Eye for this success.

In the last few years since Esterson took control of the publication, Eye magazine has truly gone from strength to strength and at a time when magazine publishing, in general, is going through a difficult period.

Although we do supply a small amount of material for the magazine (not the main text) I wouldn't want anybody to think reading this that I'm just "sucking up"! Quite apart from the paper, in my opinion it is an excellent publication and well worth subscribing to ...so there!

Here are some previous posts about Eye:
http://justinsamazingworldatfennerpaper.blogspot.com/2011/02/eye-78-seven-colour-marathon.html
http://justinsamazingworldatfennerpaper.blogspot.com/2010/08/eye-76.html

www.eyemagazine.com

Posted by Justin Hobson 16.11.2011

And the Sun will Shine...

Well if your Tuesday, November morning is looking as grey and dank as mine, here's something that will brighten it up!

I've just received a lovely screenprint from designer and illustrator Billy Allinson, who produced this print on our Colorset, Natural 270gsm (100% recycled) ...and he very kindly sent me one.

Size is 330x475mm

I first met Billy at Kingston University as he was arranging the invitations and promotional material for their graduation show. Since then he worked for many years at Formula One, designing a wide range of their promotional material including a party invitation for one of Petra Ecclestone's extravagant parties!

Billy now combines working with his own clients with freelancing and has his own silkscreen studio  - a man of many talents!
www.billyallinson.com

...and thanks for my lovely print which is definitely brightening up the day!

Posted by Justin Hobson 15.11.2011

London 2016

This is a fascinating and beautifully produced book commissioned by leading international property consultancy, Knight Frank to visually communicate their predictions for London's commercial property market, in a project titled 'London 2016'.

Five years doesn't seen too far away, but the invitation to their September conference is worded as follows:
"In 2006, no one owned an iphone, Lehman Brothers' market capitalisation was $40 Billion and Bear Stearns' was $20 Billion, Iceland had a triple A credit rating, Twitter signed up it's 50th tweeter in July - think how different the world will be in five years time..."
(...that makes you think!)

Knight Frank commissioned London based agency YCN to produce the conference collateral, including this specially produced book to be given as a take-home pieces for select clients detailing the company's view of London in five years time.

The size of the book is 185x245mm, portrait. It is printed on SHIRO Echo, White (100% recycled) which has a "natural" off white shade and works well with the illustration and text. The book is made using two text weights 160gsm for the three throw-out pages and 100gsm for the main text made up of 45 "French Folded" sections.

The casebound book is covered in dark grey bookcloth and is hot foil blocked in silver.

All the text is "French Folded" as you can see below:

The creative team at YCN on the project is as follows:

Project Director: Alex Ostrowski

Art Direction & Design: Alex Hunting

The text features illustrations by Samuel Green and infographics by Chris Clarke

...and particularly remarkable (other than the paper, of course!) is that the job has been printed digitally by Pureprint on an HP Indigo press and the result is just superb. The solid colours alone compete with the quality achievable with offset litho. Simon Cooper at Pureprint handled the project.

 ...and a lovely touch is the rubber stamp used to personalise and number each of the 150 copies:

http://www.knightfrank.co.uk/
http://agency.ycnonline.com/
http://agency.ycnonline.com/people/portfolio/samuel-green/
http://www.chris-clarke.co.uk/
www.pureprint.com

Posted bu Justin Hobson 10.11.2011 

Westerham Press set to close

St Ives has announced the closure of the award-winning report and accounts and fine art printer St Ives Westerham Press (together with its Blackburn print site). Although it has been phrased as an "intention to close" (because of employment legislation) it is certain that it will close, thus marking an end to a sixty year history.

Westerham Press has been one of the most important offset litho sheet-fed printers in the UK, both from an innovation and quality point of view, since I have been involved in the industry. This move signals the further diversification of the St Ives group away from the core activity of printing.

The full article on Printweek is here:
http://www.printweek.com/Business/article/1103549/St-Ives-Direct-announces-Westerham-Press-Blackburn-closures/

Earlier in the year I wrote about the passing away of the founder of Westerham Press:
http://justinsamazingworldatfennerpaper.blogspot.com/2011/03/rowley-atterbury-printer.html

Sadly, there is little positive news in the print (or paper) industry at the moment.
http://www.westerhampress.co.uk/westerham
http://www.st-ives.co.uk

Posted by Justin Hobson 10.11.2011

The Necessary Cat

This is a self published book by photojournalist Chris Kelly. Chris has previously produced other publications but she sometimes felt that the material choice could have been more considered.

For this new project, she met with Emma Horner at London printers Push and Emma suggested that Chris call me to discuss materials. Chris popped in to our office in Tonbridge and I showed her various materials and how they worked with mono images. The end result  is this modest, simple but beautifully produced publication.

The book is 203x152mm Landscape, perfect bound. The paper used is our Marazion Ultra, 4pp cover on 250gsm with a 46pp text on 135gsm. The cover is matt laminated with gloss UV varnish over the images.The mono images are reproduced in CMYK throughout.

If you like cats, you'll love this book (I think it's on Amazon)

...and thanks to Chris for her appreciative note.

ckeditions@blueyonder.co.uk

www.push-print.com

Posted by Justin Hobson 09.11.2011