Bob Eight Pop

Bob Eight Pop is a small, boutique silkscreen studio based in East London who have been doing work for an impressive list of clients for over thirty years. Clients such as Cartier, Bibliotheque, The Design Museum, Church of London, Matthew Williamson and Airside to name but a few.

Earlier this year Bob Eight Pop (BEP) became part of the Absolute group of companies, a one stop shop for brands and retailers. They develop packaging solutions, print procurement and all manner of services that brands require on a global basis. Regular readers of this blog may remember the lovely Ted Baker SS|2012 lookbook that Absolute printed on our StarFine last year.
http://justinsamazingworldatfennerpaper.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/great-exhibitionist.html

Anyway, Absolute are now running a series of workshops for the brands and customers they work with and they invited me along to BEP last week, to see what was going on. Demonstrations by the printers were followed by an invitation to have a go...

One of the prints pictured below. A particularly poignant quote by Frank Lloyd Wright, which thankfully was printed on our Colorset 100% Recycled paper!

BEP has hand bench equipment and also a carousel for textile printing. Below is one of the invited guests in the studio, creating a unique design on a T shirt.

Company founder  Bob Ellis, (you'll recognise him from the identity pic below) flanked by Andrew Towers (Left) and Gary Elliott (Right) Managing Director of Absolute.

It was a great afternoon, very enlightening and educative ...it was great fun as well as they had laid on beer (brewed literally around the corner) with custom "Absolute" labelling.

Too many people to thank for the invitation, suffice it to say thank you to all and I look forward to trying the beer.

Bob Eight Pop is a really interesting small company. They are half a dozen people with a wealth of knowledge and experience together with a real passion for print.

http://www.bobeightpop.com/

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

 

PS in case you were wondering the excellent Bob Eight Pop identity was created by Dry http://www.dry.uk.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 22.07.2013



The Lakes by yoo

This is a beautiful brochure for a luxury development of second homes. The Lakes is a private estate set amongst 650 acres of idyllic Cotswold countryside. The project is a joint venture between developer The Raven Group and property design experts yoo.

 

The Lakes is an gated community where nature and design work in harmony to provide the ultimate rural retreat and lifestyle and it was important that the brochure projected these values and assets.

The brochure size is 210x270mm, landscape and is perfect bound with a 48pp text printed on Omnia 150gsm.The striking commissioned photography has reproduced brilliantly on the Omnia whilst not losing the tactility and natural uncoated feel that was required. The look and feel is a confident piece of literature, not some "glossy property brochure"...

 

Art direction and design is by London based agency Bold & Bold. It is worth pointing out that this exquisite brochure was only part of this project. As well as the literature, there is the website and an extensive press and on-line advertising campaign which all tied together. Creative directors are Emily Bold and Phil Bold.

 

Printing is by CPI Colour.

 

www.thelakesbyyoo.com
www.boldandbold.com
www.cpicolour.co.uk

Posted by Justin Hobson 18.07.2013

Final Project - Matt Emmins

This is a project which I think is of interest, produced on our Offenbach Bible  A final major project for Matt Emmins at Portsmouth University and his description of the project is as follows:

"The project entitled '360' originated as a look into the use of circles in information design and whether they were a valid and viable way of showing data in a visual form. As the project developed it evolved into looking at 'the perfect circle' and whether it can be drawn freehand. This prompted me to test my own drawing abilities as well as my peers and lecturers to see who was more capable. I ended up collating a set of hand drawn circles which became a data set, that I began too use in an empirical research project. I aimed to discover patterns and trends in the way people draw circles. The outcome is a publication which houses the proposal and methodologies used, the data set, printed onto trace layers to allow for comparisons and finally the visual analysis which uses the circular form as its framework"

The project was printed digitally. The size is 1ft x 1ft when opened up so 1ft x 6inches (305x152mm in the real world!) when closed inspired by the size of isotype visualisation charts. The project is typeset in Futura light.

The Offenbach Bible 60gsm is 'French folded' and the project is perfect bound.

Matt's course lecturer at Portsmouth is Michael Harkins (who's appeared on this blog many times before). Among the various people listed in the credits on the back page are all the participants, Maaike van Neck and also ...me! Thanks to Matt for remembering to share with me and to thank us for supplying a small order of paper for this project.

www.mattemmins.com
www.port.ac.uk

Posted by Justin Hobson 17.07.2013

A Haribo Thank You

Yesterday, I received a one kilo box of Haribo Goldbears in the post which is a lovely surprise and a tasty treat! The only problem is that I don't know who sent them! There's no note and nothing on the paperwork at all.

It has been known that after we've helped someone with particularly difficult dummies or a screaming deadline, they've been kind enough to follow it up with a thank you note and in some cases, even a little gift!

 

Now, I'm not sure if these have arrived because of something good we've done or whether they're just from an admirer. I have tried contacting the internet company that despatched them several times but to no avail.

 

Anyway, they are gratefully received and if anyone knows who it is that sent them, please let me know as I would love to say thanks.

Posted by Justin Hobson  16.07.2013

 

UPDATE 24.07.2013  - Mystery solved! Dana Robertson from Neon saw this post and called to put me out of my misery! He kindly sent the gelatinous gift as thanks for helping him find an alternative to a product discontinued from Antalis. Thank you Dana

www.neon-creative.com

While we're on the subject of Antalis, let's not forget their previous, pitiful, attempt at creating a blog like this: http://creativepapersblogarchive.blogspot.co.uk/

 

Racinne

Racinne is a skincare and beauty product formulated in Korea. With a science-driven approach, these new skincare products have taken seven years to develop and incorporate ground-breaking developments in biotechnology with the regenerative powers of plants.

This is a series of three press brochures, one for each product area, prepared for the UK launch.

The three brochures are 240x170mm, portrait. They are all "self covers" with an 8pp cover and an 8pp text (16pp in total) printed on Omnia 120gsm. The pale shades work really well on the Omnia with it's matt flat nature - but the small details and metallic highlights in the CMYK images also work superbly on this paper.

There are a couple of really lovely features, the RE logo is hot foil blocked in metallic gold foil on the outer covers and the wire stitches are in brass (see pic below) ...but they look like gold!

Design is by BOB Design. Creative directors are Mireille Burkhardt and Kieran O'Connor. Designers on the project are Clara Goodger and Aaron Merrigan.

The beautiful printing was handled by Chris Pollard at Bath based Opal Print and they also produced some lovely carrier bags for the launch made out of a Takeo product called Tassel, Grey 244gsm ( ...which is stocked by that other, Hull based, paper merchant!)
Thanks to Chris Pollard for supplying me with the photographs.

www.racinne.co.uk
www.bobdesign.co.uk
www.opalprint.co.uk

Posted by Justin Hobson 15.07.2013

The Last of Us - Media Kit

This is an exquisite piece of media kit packaging produced for Sony Computer Entertainment for their recently launched The Last of Us, playstation3 game. The package consisted of a premium limited edition box, 7 different language versions, distributed to over 2500 members of the media across 4 continents and 33 countries!

Fluid Design, lead creative Paul Whitaker, said "Focusing on the game’s strong visual imagery and limited colour palette, we included subtle survival-esque connotations: download codes as matches and the kit is presented in a pvc o-ring, designed to look of the game world – dirty, stained and mouldy with diecut bullet hole effect. The two-piece rigid black covered box, features a foiled logo on the lid and introduces the 2 main characters, Joel and Ellie, printed on the inner"

The main booklet has a 4pp cover and a 12pp text printed on our Marazion Ultra 135gsm, printed in four colour, giving the pages a tactile feel on the unprinted parts and a sheen on the printed areas.The finished size of the booklet is 190mm square but as you may notice from the picture below, the text is set in by 5mm around the edge which gives it a much "bookier" feel.

Marazion Ultra was also used for a match book and the duplexed cards.

In the gaming world it's been getting a lot of coverage on the internet, including an "unboxing" where someone literally takes everything out of the box, bit by bit! (these gaming people are pretty serious!)You can watch it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yhy0Pt8B258&feature=youtu.be

Quite apart from the paper, one of my favourite items is the cassette tape in a case which is included in the kit and guess what, it isn't a cassette, it's a cleverly disguised USB stick. All in all, this is a superb presentation.

Art direction, design and production is by Birmingham based Fluid Design. Lead creative on the project is Paul Whitaker.

www.thelastofus.com
www.fluidesign.co.uk

Posted by Justin Hobson 11.07.2013

ISTD Student Awards 2013

On Friday evening I was invited to the ISTD Student awards ceremony, hosted at the lovely Pentagram building in West London. Pentagram partner, Angus Hyland, presented the certificates to the successful students and tutors.

It was a beautiful summer evening, and as with all ISTD events it was a very warm and friendly event with the drinks provided (kindly sponsored by Mike Daines of eLexicons).

Angus Hyland presenting the awards

This presentation evening was for the main Student Assessment scheme held in the UK and Ireland. Students from Universities and Institutions around the UK and Ireland answered a number of briefs written by the ISTD's Education team. Judging took place in March and in total, there were 64 passes, 12 Merits and 5 Commendations. This year, the University of West England (Bristol) had most success, with 18 passes, merits and Commendations. Tutors are Gabriel Solomons and John Paul Dowling.

As a special presentation, Angus Hyland was awarded Fellowship of the ISTD in recognition of his contribution and typographic achievement over the years. The picture shows Angus receiving his certificate, presented by Alan Kitching.

After the presentation, Angus gave a short talk which included a description about his early beginnings as a designer and his start in typography using sheets of his parent's Letraset rub down lettering, sitting at the kitchen table!

 

The Student awards take place over all over the globe throughout the year, the next being the South African Assessments and then the Australasian Assessments covering Australia and New Zealand.

 

My thanks to the ISTD board for inviting me and as I have said many times on this blog before, it's very important to support organisations such as the ISTD and events such as this. A big thank you to all those members of the ISTD who freely give their time for the benefit of others, in particular, Freda Sack, who has been such an important figure in the society for so many years.

www.istd.org.uk
www.pentagram.co.uk

www.elexicons.com

Posted by Justin Hobson 09.07.2013