Illustration: Making Pictures

A new conference at St Bride's has been announced called Illustration: Making Pictures on 19th June 2012.

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" Scott Adams

Here's some information about it:
Illustration plays an integral part in many of our design processes – from interpreting the ideas of designers, to bringing to life an author’s words. Free from the constraints of a set brief, illustration can act as an outlet where creative expression can roam freely.

Mike Nicholson

We normally only see the highly polished end result in the pages of a magazine, on a billboard or a jam jar label, but for illustrators this journey starts with ideas; with scribbles and sketches, mistakes and musings.

With the advent of digital technology, we can gain more immediate insight into the story behind the pictures. Illustration can blur the boundaries across design, art, and typography and above all illustration engages, delights and inspires offering a fresh perspective to the world we live in.

There are some great speakers (see pics) coming, it should be an excellent event.

Pure Cow - Linzie Hunter

The Metal Pig - John Lawrence

Speakers include: Ben Flynn, John Lawrence, Linzie Hunter, Kai and Sunny, Nic Rawling, Peter Schrank, Helen Stephens  – more to be announced shortly.

Conference illustrator: Mike Nicholson

Demonstrators: Paul Antonio, Helen Ingham, Richard Lawrence, Peter Smith

Tickets are £85 (£70 for Friends of St Bride's members) · concessions and full-time students £60

For more information, follow the link:
http://stbride.org/events?show=illustration

Posted by Justin Hobson 11.05.2012

AirW1

There are property brochures and there are property brochures - this is simply an amazing property brochure!

AirW1 is a Grade II listed building which incorporates the old Regent Palace Hotel in Piccadilly and has been converted to provide a mix of office, retail, residential and restaurant space around a stunning central atrium. More than half of the hotel’s original façade has been retained and repaired and significant sections of its exquisite Art Deco interiors restored and reinstated with four glamorous 1930s entertainment venues being completely restored within the redevelopment (...another point of interest, I discovered is that the offices will be serviced by a high-tech energy centre powered by a cutting-edge hydrogen fuel cell).

The Crown Estate appointed DN&Co as the branding agency for the property which included all aspects, such as signage, website, marketing and this brochure.

This brochure exudes quality of art direction, typography, design and print and finishing. Taking design cues from the building's heritage, an "Art Deco" identity involving a bespoke brand typeface was the chosen route.

Size is 210x270mm, portrait. The cover is a standard 4pp cover with 2 pieces (front and back) of Astralux 250gsm mounted onto our 2000mic Vale Board giving a very thick cover. The boards are cut away 15mm from the spine. The front cover has an angled die cut in the bottom right hand corner with the underneath cover board showing. The high gloss Astralux has been de-bossed with the signature brand pattern, which if you enlarge the pic below, you should be able to see.

Inside the text is printed in CMYK plus a pantone special gold 

The 72pp text is printed on our Omnia 150gsm. The beautiful photography looks amazing. Reproduction is superb whilst still having an excellent bulk with a tactile and engaging feel.

And in case you hadn't noticed, the pics of the spreads have something unusual about them, they are lying flat with perfect readovers.

This job incorporates a new 'Layflat binding' technique. It was important for this job in particular, which is designed to work as spreads and it works - it opens completely flat and open - and it doesn't fall apart. To be honest when you see a book opening as well as this, you have to question why anyone would use conventional binding ever again!

The section dividers printed in Pantone gold looks really like gold!

Another particularly beautiful touch is the production of a bespoke branded "capacity" envelope with 14mm capacity:

Design is by London design agency DN&Co who specialise in property branding. Creative Director is Ben Dale. Print production including the layflat binding is by Push.

I just spotted that this is shortlisted on the DesignWeek awards listings - and so it should, as it is a superb piece of literature

http://www.airw1.com

http://www.dnco.com/

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

Post by Justin Hobson 09.05.2012

Jobs from the past - Number 31

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...

Ballpoint 

Exhibition Catalogue 2004

In 2004, Angus Hyland, a partner at Pentagram's London office, curated an exhibition celebrating 50 years of the Parker ballpoint jotter. Introduced in 1954, the Parker Jotter sold more than 150 million pens worldwide and was Parker's first ever ballpoint pen. Angus's aim was to explore and celebrate the artistic potential of the humble ballpoint pen. His inspiration came from a collection he had begun to make of the doodles and drawings made by his fellow Pentagram partners during their international meetings. A conversation with his wife, the illustrator Marion Deuchars, gave rise to the idea of an exhibition of artwork created using only ballpoint pens. The result was Ballpoint, a collection of works by over 50 fellow creatives from around the world.

I remember that I went along to Pentagram for a meeting with Angus together with Gary Bird from Gavin Martin. Angus briefed us about the project as a whole and the exhibition catalogue in particular. He showed us some of the submitted exhibits including the school desk (see below) which illustrator Billie Jean had submitted - not just a photograph, Billie went out and bought a desk, illustrated it and sent the whole desk to Pentagram - how cool is that!

A spread showing work by Ian Wright and Billie Jean.

The brief was to produce something that had the actual look and feel of a sketchbook rather than something that just reproduced the images. He didn't want a pastiche, just something that felt realistic ...and of course a solution that was also affordable. After discussing pagination and economical formats with Gary, the result is a book of 235x300mm, portrait, saddle stitched. The 72pp text was printed on our Redeem 100% Recycled 130gsm, which has the utilitarian feel but which would reproduce some of the more demanding images really well. The cover is Idaho Blu Sky 275gsm, which has an "excercise book feel" and colour and which worked really well with the blue binding tape that went down the spine. The tape is also used to create a pen holder - there is a full flap on the inside back cover which is glued  down allowing a slot with the loop of tape which cleverly holds the pen.

A spread showing a detail from Roderick Mills’ “The skies are full, 101 aircraft, 101 pens (no.2).”

Work by Angus Hyland and Marion Deuchars.

Invitation to the private view:

Images from the exhibition:

I wasn't sure how I could pick one or two people to highlight in this piece, so I've listed all the contributors here:

Ceri Amphlett, Lorenzo Apicella, Ron Arad, Alan Baker, James Biber, Nicholas Blechman, Anthony Burrill, Margaret Calvert, Nina Chakrabarti, Paul Davis, Mike Dempsey, Ryan Denton, Marion Deuchars, Stephen Doyle, Daniel Eatock, Jonathan Ellery, Sara Fanelli, Alan Fletcher, Jeff Fisher, Jason Ford, Tom Gauld, Michael Gillette, Fernando Gutiérrez, George Hardie, Thomas Heatherwick Studio, Julian House, Sharon Hwang, Angus Hyland, Benoit Jacques, Billie Jean, Kerr Noble, David Lancashire, Uwe Loesch, Ross Lovegrove, Fernando Medina, Abbott Miller, Roderick Mills, Flavio Morais, Christoph Niemann, Woody Pirtle, Shonagh Rae, Lucinda Rogers, Paula Scher, Sophie Smallhorn, Leonardo Sonnoli, DJ Stout, Adrian Taylor, Patrick Thomas, Peter Till, Aude Van Ryn, Ian Wright.

From my point of view, it was a great project to be involved with. It won  many awards including the 2005 DesignWeek Award for Promotional Brochures, the Best in Book Creative Review Annual 2005 and the main award in the Books and Exhibition Catalogues category at the 23rd International Biennial of Graphic Design in Brno in 2008 and probably many other awards I'm not aware of!

A particularly lovely touch (especially from my point of view) is the beautiful way in which our business cards were illustrated on the credits page:

Art direction is by Angus Hyland with artwork by Marion Deuchars. Designer on the project was Charlie Hanson. Charlie has since established her own studio together with Jessie Earle called Studio 10½. The exhibition was co-curated by Steven Bateman, PR and gallery coordinator at Pentagaram, he is now an established and revered wordsmith.

It was beautifully printed and finished by Gavin Martin in London.

If you've got a copy, you're lucky as it's an absolute gem!

http://www.parkerpen.com/
www.pentagram.co.uk
http://mariondeuchars.com/
www.tenandahalf.net
Steven Bateman: http://www.26.org.uk/members.asp?ID=3442
www.gavinmartincolournet.co.uk

Posted by Justin Hobson 04.05.2012

Kappa

London based design company, The Grid, created this piece of literature for Italian sportswear manufacturer Kappa to lauch their new range of Luggage. Working with retail marketing specialists TCC Global, the purpose is to produce a brief overview of the range aimed at press and retail outlets.

Size is A5 portrait (148x210mm), portrait. It is an 8pp concertina fold on Omnia 200gsm. The job was about 1000 copies and the mono imagery and dark grey solids were litho printed out of CMYK which works really well with Omnia with it's matt flat nature. Very simple and effective.

Creative Director at The Grid is Johnathan Collins and the designer on the project is Lewis Dace. Print is by Bermondsey based printer Scanplus (Dan Cattle).

www.kappa.com

http://www.tccglobal.com/en/company/

www.thegridcreative.com

http://www.scanplus.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 30.05.2012

Beauty in The Making

Yesterday evening I went to the European premiere of "Linotype The Film" and it was brilliant! It was a clever and most engaging piece of documentary film making which neatly combined the historical aspects of this incredible invention by Ottmar Mergenthaler in the late 19th century with the world changing consequences and nearly a hundred years of service making mass print communication a reality and it's relatively recent commercial demise. It's amazing just how many people are still interested in the machine and the process and are keeping it alive.

I loved it. Here is the review with the trailer that I posted earlier in the year:   

http://justinsamazingworldatfennerpaper.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/linotype-film.html

The film was screened as one of the evening events at the week long "Beauty in The Making" expo in London hosted by that other, Hull based, paper company! At an exhibition space in London's Bloomsbury, they set up an exhibition which covered everything from paper making and technology to letterpress printing on Adana presses, handmade envelope demonstrations and a Monotype exhibit featuring some of Eric Gill's original sketches for Gill Sans. All in all, it was an excellent event.

...here are pics, to give you a flavour: 

Doug Wilson, director and producer, of Linotype The Film, with Q&A's after the film screening:

http://www.linotypefilm.com/
www.gfsmith.com

Posted by Justin Hobson 27.04.2012 

Roman Holiday

Last week I was fortunate enough to be on holiday in Italy visiting Rome and Pompeii. On one of the days which was rather wet we were at a bit of a loose end. I saw a town called Amalfi on the map and remembered (by chance!) that there was a handmade paper mill there. So we hopped in the car and off we went to see a paper mill that was established in the 13th century - real medieval stuff!

It is situated half way up the mountainside on which the town of Amalfi is situated. At one time there were 16 paper mills on the mountain making use of the fast flowing fresh water streaming off the mountain to make paper and power the water wheels. The mill itself (which is now preserved as a museum) is carved out of the solid rock. This is a picture of the mill entrance:

The inside of the mill, hewn out of the rock:

The vats of pulp/water for handmade paper production:

Now, here's a truly amazing thing - the mill installed a "Hollander Beater" which is a machine which was a 18th century Dutch invention, to more efficiently break down fibres (rags) for papermaking - rather than beating them with a hammer with sharp spikes. This mill invested in this new technology and the machine was installed on 18th November 1745 - and this is the machine, still powered by the water wheel which I saw actually working , pictured below:

In the 19th century, the mill made inverstments in the new fangled paper machines which are shown below - although they are not currently in production (they only make handmade papers now), they work on the same principle as all modern paper machines.

On the picture below, note the saw in the foreground, which is the way in which the sheets were cut off the (very slow) machine and also in the background, the way that they created extra room for the machine by cutting further into the mountain:

...and to prove I was actually there, here I am with the machine in the background:

If you are in the area, it is definitely worth a visit.

http://www.museodellacarta.it/ingresso2.asp?l=2

http://www.amalfiguide.it/what-see-amalfi-coast/amalfi/paper-museum

Posted by Justin Hobson 25.04.2012