Diamond Jubilee Exhibition at the V&A



Photo: Cecil Beaton 1960 

If you weren't aware of it, there is currently an exhibition at the V&A featuring portraits of Queen Elizabeth II by royal photographer Cecil Beaton. The exhibition celebrates Her Majesty in her roles as princess, monarch and mother and coincides with the 60th anniversary of her accession to the throne.

You can read more about it and see some of Beaton's amazing (and iconic) images here:
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/cecilbeaton/

If you were wondering if this was just a pleasant public information announcement, you'd be wrong!  I thought I would use it as an opportunity to show the lovely posters produced for the exhibition which are printed on our lovely Omnia 150gsm and which (as you can see below) faithfully reproduces Cecil Beaton's work...

The other thing to point out is that the image is "gold laden" and even though an uncoated feel was required Omnia was chosen because of the way images reproduce - including gold made out of CMYK (not specials) and still look gold, whereas on other uncoated papers it would just look a bit mustardy brown! (in my opinion). The poster size is 510x760mm.

 

Design is by the V&A in house studio. Print is by Principal Colour.

 

...and you'd better hurry as the exhibition ends on 22nd April.

 

http://www.vam.ac.uk/

http://www.principalcolour.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 11.04.2012

It's Nice That is 5

Last week, It's Nice That, celebrated their 5th birthday with the launch of their new site. Designed by INT Works and built by With Associates, the new site is the third generation of the It’s Nice That site.

Do have a look... www.itsnicethat.com

It was great to be invited to share in their celebrations - they asked friends, collaborators and anyone who's helped along the way, to the pub to toast their birthday. So last Thursday evening after work, a pretty sizeable gathering met up at the Barley Mow in Curtain Road to celebrate.

Not the best picture of the year, but it gives you the flavour... it was such a balmy evening, nearly everyone was outside! 

Congratulations to everyone at Its Nice That, especially to Will and Alex who had that dream 5 years ago, got their heads down and stuck to it ...Happy Birthday

www.itsnicethat.com

Posted by Justin Hobson 10.04.2012

The Great Exhibitionist

This is the latest campaign from Ted Baker, one of the UK's leading clothing retailers. Renowned for applying clever ideas and twists to its marketing, the company has become a desired designer label through word of mouth rather than just advertising.

This is "The Great Exhibitionist and his Private Views" campaign, launched for this years Spring/Summer collection. This piece of literature is produced to the very highest standard with superb art direction photography, location (the former Royal Naval College in Greenwich) and print reproduction. 

Front Cover with gold foil: 

Inside front cover and Page 1:

First spread showing the fab location:

...and the fabulous clothes, of course:

The new Langley collection, with it's darker photography has worked really well on the StarFine:

This publication was produced in two sizes, 240x330mm portrait format which is just a lovely size and economical out of B1 and a reduced size 202x150mm. Both publications have a 4pp cover and a 72pp text and are perfect bound.

It is printed on our StarFine White, which is an uncoated paper, but as you can see, the reproduction is excellent - both with the solids and the fleshtones. The 300gsm cover is hot foiled blocked in gold metallic foil and the text is printed on 130gsm.

The superb printing is by Absolute Ink who are based in East London. Design and art direction is by the in house team at Ted Baker.

This is how the two sizes look side by side:

You can see more of the campaign here: http://www.tedbakerpromotions.co.uk/lookbooks/uk/ss12/

...and this is how they applied the campaign to the retail outlets (v. clever):

To celebrate the launch of this campaign,  Ted collaborated with a host of acclaimed illustrators to create a digital fashion portrait service called Ted’s Drawing Room, the initiative giving over 100 customers a signed and framed, original, one-off portrait created by one of 11 top illustrators - what a great idea!

You can read more about it here:
http://www.tedbakerblog.com/2012/03/teds-drawing-room-put-yourself-in-a-picture/

All in all, it's a great campaign - look out for it.

www.tedbaker.com

http://www.theabsolute.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 05.04.2012

Jobs from the past - Number 30

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....

 

Aquascutum - Show Invite

Spring Summer 2006

This is the invitation for the launch of the Aquascutum Spring/Summer 2006 collection at the Banqueting House in London.

Unfortunately it's a really hard job to satisfactorily show on this blog. The reasons being that it's printed on our lovely Offenbach Bible 60gsm and therefore has a light feel and "rattle" to it and unfortunately you can't get an idea of the tactility on the screen! The design uses show through which works really well, but is equally hard to demonstrate here!

The invitation is A3 size (297x210mm) and is folded to A5. It is printed in just one colour, both sides by Generation Press. It looks and feels beautiful.

It is designed by Studio Thomson and fortunately I still have Mark's explanatory note which tells you about it far better than I can...

www.aquascutum.com
www.studiothomson.com
www.generationpress.co.uk

Posted by Justin Hobson 02.04.2012

Favourite job of 2011....

Just a quick note to say that I like yesterday's post so much that I've decided not to do another post this week so everyone reads about The Modern House job below (...my favourite job from 2011!)

However, if you get bored, my favourite job from 2010 was this job:
http://justinsamazingworldatfennerpaper.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/magnum-1957.html

Posted by Justin Hobson 27.03.2012

The Modern House

Now hold onto your hat! ...this is simply my favourite job from last year - I've been keeping it up my sleeve, so I can write about it at length! 

Established by Albert Hill and Matt Gibberd in 2004,The Modern House is the UK’s foremost estate agency for houses and apartments of outstanding design and they have a passion for modern architecture.

This is their company brochure (titled "The Art of Selling Architecture") which sets out to explain who they are, what they do and how they do it, illustrated with 4 case studies and it does it brilliantly!

The Size of the brochure is 240x330mm, portrait, perfect bound. There is a 4pp cover which is on Omnia 200gsm  - this might seem lightweight but Omnia is very bulky and this opens well and doesn't disrupt the flow. The first and last pages are also on Omnia (120gsm) - printed to work with the cover working as end papers - the below pic shows inside front cover L/H and pg 1of text on R/H.

The images used for the cover and endpapers are from a series by artist Heidi Specker, called "IM GARTEN"  (http://www.heidispecker.de/books/imgarten/)

Now the reason that this job is more than a bit of a treat, is that after the lovely images on the cover and endpapers ...which let's face it, couldn't be anything less like a brochure for an Estate Agent, we go into a beautifully simple 2 colour section printed in black and red using amazing images of modernist buildings, simply reproduced as halftones with type in Futura.

The first section gives an overview of the company and the way they work. It's an 8pp section with a very "mono" feel and is printed on our Colorset Light Grey 120gsm which is subtly grey, giving it a rough and raw feel reflecting the fact that many of the structures that they work with are formed from concrete.

After the raw feel of the first 8pp we come to the middle 16pp which show 4 case studies of properties that they have marketed: Space House, Mildmay Park, Woodstock Studios and the iconic High & Over. The amazing architectural photography has reproduced brilliantly on our Omnia 120gsm whilst not losing the tactility that the mono section has already set - and certainly not coming across as a "glossy estate agent brochure"...

After the case study section, there is a further 8pp mono section (black and a blue special) about the people in the company, what their customers and the press say about them finishing off with Heidi Specker's images on the endpaper and cover. 

So why do I like this brochure so much? (...apart from it being on our paper!) - well, the materials used work so well with the design - the number of sections and size (8/16pp sections of 340x240mm) mean that it's maximised the use of the printing press and paper format and that it's so simple and reflects what the company does so well -

and it has some lovely touches - for example, the use of the grey as the text material and the design of the outside cover which has horizontal strips of gloss varnish applied - a machine varnish (not a UV varnish) which are deliberately subtle (see pic. on right)

Art direction and design is by Tom Watt and James Reid at Field Projects. Print production is by Push in London.

Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus school is quoted as saying "Only work which is the product of inner compulsion can have spiritual meaning" personally, I think that this piece is that type of work.

www.themodernhouse.net

http://field-projects.com/

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

Posted by Justin Hobson 26.03.2012

Miss Selfridge

...just the cover makes the difference!

Here's a job that is well worth a look, because of the way the cover is used to add to the quality and feel of the whole project.

This is the Autumn Winter lookbook for Miss Selfridge. The size of the job is A4 Portrait and is saddle stitched. What makes a particular difference to this piece of literature is the way in which Omnia 200gsm has been used for the cover to give it a more tactile engaging feel, but not just as a 4pp cover ...it is the the cover and the first and last 2pp of text - so 8pp in total. The effect is very noticeable and because of the way the colour is printed accross the spread it works as an "endpaper" as you would find in a traditional casebound book. The text is on a house gloss coated sheet, as the budget dictated. The cover gives it a quality feel and keeps it miles away from the naff "glossy" brochures which are often produced for fashion companies - the cover sets the tone and feel for the whole publication:

Cover:

Inside cover spread, printed in a turquoise special with pink fluorescent type:

Inside spread (l/h on Omnia- r/h on gloss):

Outside back cover:

Design is by Loretta Martinelli at Miss Selfridge. Print is by Screaming Colour.

...and thanks to Loretta for the file copies and the lovely note (and yes, the colour is amazing)...

www.missselfridge.com

http://www.screamingcolour.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 22.03.2012