BCN:MCR

This is some news about an exciting event which is happening in Manchester on 21st February.

Dave Sedgwick is a Manchester based designer who has organised an exhibition featuring 5 of Barcelona's best design agencie: Hey, Lo Siento, Mayuscula Brands, Mucho and Lamosca. They are are exhibiting their work at exhibition space 2022NQ (http://www.2022nq.co.uk/), just off Dale Street in the Northern Quarter, Manchester. The exhibition launches on February 21st from 6pm with an exhibition launch evening and runs for two weeks.

This is a fantastic opportunity to see some exciting work by some great designers from another country. Here are the links to the five agencies:

http://www.losiento.net/
http://www.mayuscula.es/es/home
http://heystudio.es/
http://www.lamosca.com/
http://www.mucho.ws/

You can checkout the exhibition website http://www.bcnmcr.co.uk for more information. The exhibition is free but tickets for the launch event on 21st Feb will be reasonably priced - for more information, you can email Dave dave@designbydave.co.uk

It's worth pointing out that this event has been entirely organised and currently funded by Dave alone which I think is fantastic - hats off to him. This shows two things; firstly what one person can achieve with a great idea and talking to people; second, it shows that organisations like D&AD, DBA, ISTD, Typographic Circle et al are certainly not pulling their weight.

http://www.bcnmcr.co.uk
http://www.designbydave.co.uk
http://www.2022nq.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 11.02.2013

The Herb House

Lime Wood is a boutique country house hotel, set in the heart of the New Forest and is the only 5 star hotel in the New Forest National Park. As you might expect from a hotel of this type there are many luxury facilities, including a spa - and on the roof of the spa is a ‘Herbery’. The Herb House, which is the spa and garden have been designed to reflect the hotel's location so as not to detract from the amazing views of the surrounding forest – this is complimented with the planting of the herbs and the experience of touch and smell.

This folder is a simple piece of literature to promote the facilities at the Herb House. It is a 6pp gatefold format, (297x230mm) printed on Flora Anice 350gsm - for those that aren't familiar with it, Flora is a 50% recycled paper (and FSC accredited) with natural, deliberately visible, inclusions & fibres and it works amazingly well with these beautiful images.

Outside Back Cover

I'm not sure there's a lot more I can add, except that this really is a lovely piece of literature - with a natural, quality feel. Art Direction and design is by Strattons. Print is by Pureprint.

www.limewoodhotel.co.uk
www.strattons.com
www.pureprint.com

Posted by Justin Hobson 07.02.2013

Jacksons Fencing ...in practice

This is an extremely interesting publication produced by Jacksons, a company which produces, fencing, gates, railings etc. In house graphic designer, Lauren Soutan, got in touch with me and explained that they wanted to produce a catalogue which would appeal and inspire architects. To this end, her proposal was to produce a piece of literature, more along the lines of a fashion "look-book" which would be more inspirational, rather than having all the specifications and facts and figures (which, of course, can all be found on-line). The end result is this superb piece of print, titled ...in practice.

 

On page one is a quote by Charles Eames " Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose"   

The layout is simple and alows the monochrome photography to work really well. Printed in CMYK throughout. Section divider pages printed in solid blue (also out of CMYK).

Size is 200 x 240mm, Landscape format, saddle stitched. It has a 4pp cover on Omnia 200gsm and a 36pp text on Marazion Ultra 90gsm. The deliberately lightweight feel allows the pages to flow freely and to sit flat, allowing for perfect read-overs. The materials are perfectly chosen with the Marazion Ultra in particular having a lightweight, matt look and feel but with the images reproducing beautifully with great clarity and detail.

 

Design is by Lauren Soutan at Jacksons Fencing. Print production is by James Stewart Printers in Hertford. Thanks to Lauren for sending me file copies and a note.

www.jacksons-fencing.co.uk
www.jacksons-security.co.uk
www.james-stewartprinters.com

Posted by Justin Hobson 05.02.2012

Jobs from the past - Number 40

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 and here's one from 2002.

Crafts Council Desk Calendar 2002
This desk calendar for the Crafts Council was produced using a form of modified CD Jewel case which was a popular in the 1990's and early 2000's. Not only was it a fairly cost effective way of producing a calendar - because of it's size and didn't require any binding - but it fitted with envelope and packaging sizes for easy mailing and distribution.

Now what has made this calendar different from many run of the mill calendars, is that the cover sheet was "heat debossed" and hot foil blocked in metallic silver on our Flockage Litho. As I hope you'll be able to see from the image below (click to enlarge) the Flockage debosses beautifully, leaving a perfectly flat area and leaving all the detail of the fine serifs incorporated in the gorgeous logo (designed by Pentagram, lettercut by Tom Perkins in Joanna).

The individual monthly date cards were just litho printed on one side and had a generic overlay (printed on polyprop) with punched out holes allowing the dates to show through together with the corresponding days of the week on the overlay.

Individual cards all printed on Neptune Unique SoftWhite 250gsm.

Design is by Chris Turnbull and Steve Johnson at design partnership Johnson Turnbull. Chris and Steve have since gone their seperate ways, but Chris now runs Clerkenwell based design studio, Turnbull Grey.

The excellent print and hot foiling and de-bossing is by Benwell Sebard.

www.craftscouncil.org.uk
www.turnbullgrey.co.uk
www.benwellsebard.co.uk

Posted by Justin Hobson 01.02.2013

Paul Snoswell



Paul Snoswell, print buyer at BP (British Petroleum) for over 22 years, sadly passed away last week, aged 77. I was privileged to have known Paul both as a family friend and professionally and in many ways, he was instrumental in me starting a career in the paper and print industry.

You may well be wondering why I am writing about this person who most of you will never of heard of. Firstly he was a huge personality in the printing industry from years gone by and he deserves to be remembered. Secondly, the very position of "print buyer" has largely been forgotten but is one that in a now bygone era of design and print was paramount . It should be remembered that in the pre-digital age, print was the foremost communications medium and therefore, it's production and distribution, especially to a global organisation like BP, was incredibly important.

Having trained as a Stereotyper (hot metal, lead platemaking) Paul then served in the RAF for his National Service. After a short stint as a sales rep, he was approached by one of his advertising clients - the advertising agency Mather & Crowther (now Ogilvy & Mather) and joined them as a production executive. He later joined Thomas Cook as a print buyer and after six years moved to BP as assistant print buyer. Four years later, when his boss Denis Peacock moved on, Paul became print buyer for the whole of BP.

Although in overall charge of the company's print output, due to the shear enormity of the organisation (over 300 subsiduaries across the world), Paul acted as a print buying trouble-shooter for many of the departments based at Britannia House (BP's headquarters) and other companies in the BP empire around the world. The two largest publications that were produced were the Annual Report, the print run being a massive 450,000 copies in 1986 (!) and the Statistical Review. In 1986/7 the annual report was designed by Lock Pettersen (now Tor Pettersen) and the Stastistical Review by Ron Ward Design.

British Petroleum Interim Report

The position of "Print Buyer" was an exceptionally responsible one and certainly in the context of a large organisation such as BP, print buyer was a management position with real gravitas with access to all the senior executives, including the Company Secretary, Chairman etc. Also, large companies which spent millions of pounds on print needed to have a manager to take financial responsibility for a considerable outgoing. The role of print buyer is now largely defunct, certainly in large corporations, reasons are many and varied. Print is now a less important medium, the overall quality of colour reproduction is now much more achievable by the most basic printer. Outsourcing of design and communications has resulted in print being "bundled up" as a package with responsibility being assumed by the design or marketing agency and at a time when all organisations are trying to reduce head count, corporations cannot justify what is now seen as the luxury of having someone oversee the printed output - a job that was once regarded as essential.

BP printed literature in colour

Having retired in 1987, it is unlikely that many people active in print and design will remember Paul or the many print companies that he worked with (sadly, most of which are now defunct) such as Metcalfe Cooper, Libra Press, Dixmotive Press, Hunterprint, Stukeley Press, Tanbryn Litho, RR Donnelley et al. A measure of the importance of print buyers is that when Paul retired in May 1987, there was a two page article about his career in the trade magazine "Print Buyer" (yes, there really was a magazine published with that title!)

Print Buyer Magazine May 1987

Thanks Paul. You will be fondly remembered by those that knew you.

Posted by Justin Hobson 3.01.2013

JAZZ FM

Hold onto your hats! ...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, so here goes...

This piece of printed literature is an LP sized brochure in a record sleeve, produced for UK based radio station Jazz FM and is a promotional piece of print, aimed at potential advertisers and clients. The mono photography, many from the 1950's by Bob Willoughby and Wiliam Ellis, is beautifully combined with printed metallics (gold & silver) with dense black and surprisingly vivid flat colours.

Brochure (r/h) sliding into sleeve (l/h)



Front cover of brochure


Feast your eyes on the spreads below and then you can read all about it....

The brochure is 305mm square, saddle stitched with a 4pp cover on Omnia 200gsm and a 36pp text on Marazion Ultra 90gsm. The 313mm square sleeve is printed on our Mandricote Cream Back [1 sided] 300gsm. All these materials just work together beautifully. The Mandricote has exactly the right feel for the sleeve (and is a similar material to what would have been used for sleeves, back in the day!) and prints the metallic gold superbly. The whole brochure relies on a lightweight feel to be saddle stitched, maintain the right flow and to slip easily into the sleeve and this is where the Omnia 200gsm cover and lightweight text on 90gsm just works. Printed in CMYK, offset litho, plus special gold and silver.

Design and art direction is by Matt Willey. Described as "sumptuous" by John L. Waters, editor of Eye magazine, who also explains that the two main display typefaces are Engravers and Timmons, a display font drawn by Willey himself (and named after jazz pianist Bobby Timmons).
http://www.eyemagazine.com/blog/post/jazz-in-print

The superb print, production and finishing was handled by John McCormick at printers DG3 Europe, who are a global company with offices in most corners of the world, although this project was handled by the London office.

So why's it my favorite piece from 2012? Few designers (these days) get the opportunity to work with the record sleeve format which was once a pre-eminent format in "popular design" Design for vinyl singles and LP's was a large part of the graphics industry from the 1940's up to 1990's providing a visual narrative of the time but has sadly all but disappeared. By selecting this format, combined with superb art direction and typography, Matt has created a truly stunning piece of literature.

...and if an accolade from me wasn't enough (just kidding) it's been selected by the judges to receive the  “Certificate of Typographic Excellence” by the Type Directors Club, and will also be shown at the 59th Awards Exhibition in New York. Recognition, well deserved.

www.jazzfm.com

www.mattwilley.co.uk
www.jazzbodyandsoul.co.uk
http://tdc.org/
http://www.eyemagazine.com/blog/post/jazz-in-print
www.dg3.com

Posted by Justin Hobson 28.01.2013

...from paper to data!

Below is a picture of a paper mill or rather, it's a picture of what was once a paper mill.

In what seems like a strange twist of fate with a healthy dollop of irony, Google acquired Stora Enso’s Summa paper mill in Hamina, Finland, in 2009. The paper mill which used to produce 350,000 tonnes of newsprint and magazine paper, had suffered persistent losses and with a downturn in demand, the  long-term profitability prospects were poor.

Using the pre-existing infrastructure of the mill, Google bought the site to estabish a state of the art data center. The large site sits on the beautiful Baltic Sea and is able to use untreated sea water, piped through a pre-existing tunnel, to cool the servers naturally. This natural cooling, together with large volumes of cheap electricity and green energy sources makes this former paper mill an ideal place to convert into a server farm.

With the paper machines removed, rows upon rows of servers - data is the product now.

Last summer, Google announced Phase II with a further €150 million investment. This will involve the restoration and conversion of an Alvar Aalto-designed machine hall. Interestingly, Alvar Aalto (1898-1976) is the Finish born architect and designer who ranks alongside Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright in the modernist movement, so an important piece of Architectural history is also being preserved.

So what can we make of this? Well one thing it highlights is that just because something appears on the internet, it doesn't mean that there is no cost and no impact on the environment.

Ironically Google have just launched a "Go Paperless" campaign in 2013: http://www.paperless2013.org/
and perhaps unsurprisingly, there's been a bit of an anti Google backlash:
http://www.twosides.info/UK/Verdigris-urges-print-and-paper-industries-to-Go-Google-less

So if you have a client that says "Oh, I'll put it on my website because it saves paper and that's better for the environment" maybe get them to think again and look at these articles.

http://www.google.co.uk/about/datacenters/locations/hamina/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvar_Aalto
http://www.storaenso.com/
http://www.twosides.info/

Posted by Justin Hobson 24.01.2013