Clerkenwell Design Week

Today is the start of Clerkenwell Design Week and I popped in today, to have a quick shufti. Now in it's 4th year, it's firmly established as one of the London design community's favourite events and it's growing every year.

 
It takes place all over the Clerkenwell and Smithfield area and combines exhibitions with talks and with showrooms. For the first time ever, they've also introduced some pop up pavilions.

I particularly noted the origami flowers outside the Secret Gin  Garden
http://www.gingarden.com/#8ac/custom_plain

You better get down there - it's only on until Thursday...
http://www.clerkenwelldesignweek.com/

Mother of Pearl

 

Maia Norman is the Creative Director at Mother of Pearl and each season, she works with an acclaimed artist. Previous collaborators include Polly Morgan, Francesco Simeti, Gary Hume, Fiona Banner, Keith Tyson, Jim Lambie, Matt Collishaw and Carsten Holler. This last season, Amy Powney, the head designer at Mother of Pearl collaborated with New York based artist Fred Tomaselli to produce their collection and this is their beautifully produced lookbook.

The size is 260 x 185mm, portrait, perfect bound with an 8pp cover and a 40pp text. It is printed on our Omnia and has a 8pp cover on 280gsm and a 40pp text on 150gsm. Omnia is an extremely bulky sheet, so this has a solid, chunky, feel. It is printed offset litho, CMYK throughout, with the small M monogram being hoy foil blocked in gold foil on the outside front cover.

...and here we go for the plug about the paper! - As you can see from the images, there is lots of colour and detail in the images with CMYK dark areas - loads of ink going down and it looks great on the Omnia, reproducing bright vibrant colours as well and keeping all the detail in the darker images, epecially the little detail shots below...

Original design concept is by William Hall with the artwork being produced 'in house' at Mother of Pearl. Photography is by Robert Wyatt.

The superb print is by Push ...and thanks to Danny Kirk at Push for sending me some file copies.


http://www.motherofpearl.co.uk/
www.williamhall.co.uk
www.robertwyatt.net
http://www.push-print.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 17.05.2013

365



This is a piece of CSR literature produced by Deutsche Bank who now have a system of regional newspapers showing how their global strategy is being applied at a local level by the bank and its people. The system has been developed by Studio 2br to extend its CSR communications beyond the normal production of a yearly report.

It is a 12pp format with a finished size of 470x315mm 'endorsement folded' to 235x315mm. The layout, content and photography makes this publication eminently readable, to the point that I found myself reading it (which can't be said about every file copy I receive!).

 

The material used is our Enviro-Tech 80gsm, which is 100% Recycled with good opacity and whiteness and was chosen both for this (because of the format) and it's environmental credentials.

Design is by Studio 2br. Creative Director on the project was David Shalam and the designers are Daniel Hayes and Dave Young. Print is by London based printer The Colourhouse.

If only all pieces of corporate literature could look as good as this...

www.db.co/uk

http://www.2br.com/
www.thecolourhouse.com

Posted by Justin Hobson 15.05.2013

Progressive Greetings 2013

Here's some pretty exciting news from Fenner Paper - we're exhibiting at our first 'trade show' at an exhibition called Progressive Greetings or "PG Live" as it's known. It's a show aimed at the greeting card industry and is is being held at the Business Design Centre in Islington on the 14th &15th May and here's the picture of our stand which I was helping to set up today.

 

We have a modest little stand of 3metres x 2 metres and we're showing our boards that are especially suitable for greetings cards and as you can see from the display below, we now have quite a few!

 

...as well as an AV presentation showing the way that our paper is stored, packed and blank cards are converted, we also took along a whole pallet of paper (...one of our new ranges, but more about that some other time!).

Our stand is designed by Vincent Design and thanks to Nick and Claire for all their help and support. If you are a designer or publisher of greeting cards, please do come along and we look forward to welcoming you - we're on stand 663.

www.progressivegreetingslive.com
http://www.vincentdesign.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 13.05.2013

Lulu Frost for Whistles

 

Lisa Salzer is the founder and designer for New York based jewellery brand Lulu Frost and this is their first collaboration with British fashion retailer Whistles.

This simple piece of literature, shows the jewellery off beautifully. It is a 16pp self cover and is 245x170mm, portrait. It is loose bound (no binding) and is printed on our Omnia 120gsm which feels and flows just right and the jewellery and lush greenery reproduce brilliantly  

Below image shows the loose binding with the centre spread:

Brochure design and art direction is by Whistles. Photography is by Baker and Evans. Repro, print and finishing are by Push.

http://www.whistles.co.uk/
www.lulufrost.com
www.bbde.co.uk
http://www.push-print.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 07.05.2013

Shock, horror ...it's finally happened!

 Well to most people it was always obvious and to some inevitable, but on Friday, the three companies which makes up the UK paper merchanting interests of the Australian, loss making conglomerate Paperlinx, started answering their phones using their new name.

Robert Horne, Howard Smith and Paperco will now be known as PaperlinX (surprise, surprise!)

...from this

to this....

You can read more about it here:

http://www.printweek.com/bulletin/printweekdailybulletin/article/1181216/paperlinx-rebrands-howard-smith-robert-horne-paperco/

 

This is actually a great shame for the paper industry and reflects the rather sad (and bad) state of the industry overall. I've written about it before on this blog:

http://justinsamazingworldatfennerpaper.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/toby-marchant-exits-paperlinx.html

http://justinsamazingworldatfennerpaper.blogspot.com/2012/05/stardream-answering-your-questions.html

...including my legal "shot across the bows" from Paperlinx:

http://justinsamazingworldatfennerpaper.blogspot.com/2012/10/paperlinx-gets-stroppy.html

 



Posted by Justin Hobson 07.05.2013

Jobs from the past - Number 43

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 1999.

Communicators in Business

The magazine, Communicators in Business, was published by the British Association of Communicators in Business which has subsequently become the Institute of Internal Communication (IoIC).

The magazine was designed by the then, newly formed design company, Browns. The original founders, Graham Taylor, Jonathan Ellery and Mike Turner set up Browns in 1998 after leaving Addison and this was one of their first pieces of editorial design work.


Cover image by David Stewart

Now you may be thinking, "that bloke on the cover looks very familiar" and you'd be right! This was one of my first professional engagements as a professional model (unpaid, of course!) I happened to be in the Browns studio one day and their muse struck! - the next week I was in David Stewart's Clerkenwell studio with my interesting attire. As it turned out my trousers weren't short or odd enough, so I'm actually wearing Jonathan Ellery's trousers!

Image by Paul Lowe

Image by David Stewart



Illustration by Andrzej Klimowski

The publication is 340x245mm and is a 32pp self cover, printed on our Millennium Real Silk 150gsm. It was printed by Principal Colour in Paddock Wood, Kent.

It must be said that this was a really interesting piece of literature which championed the use of good writing and great design and photography - it was definitely a groundbreaking job - and in 2000, it was a finalist in the DesignWeek awards for Editorial Design/Magazines.

So where are they all now? Jonathan Ellery remains at Browns. Mike Turner left Browns and set up his own practice called Em-Project. Graham Taylor crossed the atlantic to establish a Browns studio in New York in 2003 and he is now Creative Director at The Protean Corporation in the US. The photographer David Stewart is now represented internationally!

www.ioic.org.uk

www.brownsdesign.com

www.davidstewwwart.com

http://www.em-project.com/
http://www.theproteancorp.com/

www.principalcolour.co.uk

Posted by Justin Hobson 02.05.2013