Preen Line S/S 2014

This is the Spring/Summer 2014 look-book for Preen Line, which is the "contemporary line" range with the more economical price tag from London fashion house PREEN.

It's a lovely oversize 333x240mm, portrait, saddle stitched format. It is a 28pp "self cover". This means that it is printed on the same material throughout, so the cover is on the same weight as the text. It works well on this job as it feels really substantial. A big part of that is the format and the fact that it is printed on our Omnia 150gsm, which has a high bulk and therefore you really don't notice that the cover is no heavier ...and, most importantly, the text flows nicely in the hand and lies nice and flat.

As you can see from the images, there is lots of rich colour and blue is prevalent - and it just looks beautiful on the Omnia - just gorgeously even and crisp reproduction. In particular the images with CMYK dark areas - with lots of ink going down, looks great on the Omnia, reproducing bright vibrant colours as well and the darker images as well, whilst retaining all the detail.

Design is by Mark and Chris Thomson at Studio Thomson. Photography is by Nick Dorey and the superb print by Push.

http://www.preen.eu/
http://www.studiothomson.com/

http://www.nickdorey.com/

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

Posted by Justin Hobson 04.07.2014

New Designers 2014

Yesterday evening, I went to the New Designers exhibition and awards at the Business Design Centre in Islington.

New Designers is an exhibition for emerging design, full of innovation and fresh thinking, covering all aspects from textiles and fashion to product design, visual comms etc. It takes place over two weeks, with each Part focusing on a different set of design disciplines and featuring its own Awards Programme. The show sees over 3,000 of the most talented, newly graduated designers from the UK's leading universities come together to exhibit.

It was a lovely evening and the queue for entry was a mile long!

I saw many of the tutors and part time lecturers that I know who were from the universities and colleges who had stands at the exhibition. Particular mention shall go to Portsmouth University, who not only sent me an invitation, but also used our Colorset and Redeem 100% Recycled for their show catalogue! ...but more about that another time when I have more space to write about it.

Above is the University of Portsmouth stand and you can see all the books stacked up.

...and because I love to associate myself with success (!),  I must congratulate Eric Downer from the BA (Hons) Graphic Design course at University of Portsmouth, who won the overall "New Designer of the Year". Fantastic news for him personally and for the course and very well deserved.

Photo of Eric Downer winning his award. Photo courtesy of Dan McCabe

Eric Downer has also won an ISTD award for his piece on Electricity Pylons. I've seen it and it is a lovely piece of work. Here are his words " I don't feel pylons are particularly aesthetically pleasing (a lot of people agreed) but there was always something that made me wonder there is more to them just just pure functionality. My curiosities were rewarded when I discovered the main men behind the pylons past and the role the pylons themselves went on to play in our history. Your have to read the book to find out what and who they were".
So any of you studios out there looking for some fresh young talent ...look no further!

In particular. thanks to Sarah Houghton, Dan McCabe and Michael Harkins at the University of Portsmouth

http://www.eric-downer.co.uk/new-page-1/
www.newdesigners.com
www.port.ac.uk/graphic

Posted by Justin Hobson 04.07.2014

Jobs from the past - Number 57

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...

Magee & Co - Annual Reports Brochure - 1995

This is a simple, yet beautifully produced promotional brochure for a design company that specialises in corporate reporting. Magee & Co was established exactly 25 years ago and this brochure, produced in 1995, was used as promotional literature to potential clients.

Size of the brochure is 297x225mm, portrait and is saddle stitched. It has a 4pp cover with 150mm flaps on front and back cover which is simply hot foil blocked in matt black foil on the outside cover only.  The cover is printed on Dali, Rosso 200gsm ( a textured, felt texture) and the text is on Concorde Pure Silk 170gsm.

 

The straightforward text is just 4pp, but easily enough to convey the hard hitting message with five case examples. Printed offset litho in CMYK, plus a gloss machine varnish over the image areas.

Inside spread

According to my notes, it was printed by First Impressions (Howden Litho) based in Camberwell. Established and run by Murray Wolfe-Arbiter, First Impression was a highly regarded London based printer throughout the 1990's. Sadly like many others, they went bust in August 2004

It's an example of a really simple yet highly effective piece of promotion to the corporate market, bearing in mind that this was in the pre-internet age.

In the last 25 years, Magee & Co have produced over 300 Annual Reports for many FTSE 250 companies, plus Corporate and Social Responsibility Reports (CSR) and in more recent times, online reporting. During the 1990/2000's we supplied the papers for many of the reports that Magee & Co produced for the likes of Hammerson, Imperial Tobacco, Psion, Hay's PLC, CLS, Big Yellow PLC, ICL, Serco, to name but a few. Here's a picture of just a few from my archive:



Congratulations to David Magee and Daragh Lehane-Magee, who founded the company in 1989 for 25 successful years in corporate reporting. 

 

http://www.magee.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 01.07.2014

Istanbul Grand Airport Book

This is one of those amazing productions which is an excellent example of why, in this digital age, print still lives!

This is a book showcasing the first phase of Istanbul Grand Airport's 8,000 hectare masterplan and terminals. Located on the Black Sea coast, it is intended that when completed, it will be the world’s largest airport terminal. The design is a collaboration between  three architectural practices Nordic, Grimshaw and Haptic Architects.

Detail of etched nickel silver plate

The size of the book is A3 (420x297mm) portrait and the cover features etched nickel silver plates sunk into a duplexed cover (made from our Construction Blackstone 1500microns). The etched pattern echoes the ceiling structure running throughout the building.

The 160pp text is printed throughout on our Omnia 120gsm, with the printed endpapers on Omnia 150gsm. The result is superb and it should be noted, this publication is all printed digitally on an HP Indigo press.

Art direction and design is by London based studio BOB Design and I popped into the studio to take the pictures (above) as being such a high specification job and with so few copies produced, it wasn't possible for them to let me have a file copy. Creative directors are Mireille Burkhardt and Kieran O'Connor. Designers on the project are Clara Goodger and Aaron Merrigan.
The book is laid out in both English and Turkish, which in part, accounts for the high pagination.

Now as you might expect from a prestigious publication, it is section sewn, but as I have mentioned above, it is A3 and digitally printed. So, the only way to produce this was on one of the new HP Indigo 10000 presses, which prints a B2 sheet. Below shows the section sewing and the cloth around the spine with the Construction Blackstone mounted on the endpapers and forming the cover.

Print production is by Pureprint and there's no question that this job is superb. Beautifully printed and bound and put together with the duplexed covers and mounted plates. Productions like this make the case for clients using print. All the information in the publication could be supplied digitally, but this piece of literature is an edifice as indeed will be the new airport.

www.bobdesign.co.uk
http://www.hapticarchitects.co.uk/
http://grimshaw-architects.com/
www.nordicarch.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istanbul_New_Airport
www.pureprint.com

Posted by Justin Hobson 26.06.2014

Around the World

‘Around the World’ is a set of six A3 prints by Tom Love. These screen prints are reproductions of airline luggage tags from the 1950s, produced as striking pieces of wall art

Here are some words about the project, by the designer, Tom Love:

"My Around The World Series features six original airline tag designs. From such airlines as the iconic PANAM to Quantas, depicting the four corners of the world and celebrating the new found accessibility of foreign lands, which commercial airlines bought to the general public throughout the 1950s and beyond.

These designs symbolise the golden age of travel: where privileged passengers were whisked off on journeys around the world. Landing in exotic destinations, where they would encounter for the first time, exotic cultures and cuisine and incredible landmarks and landscapes; This indulgent and pioneering era of discovery and adventure has left behind these wonderful relics of an era gone by.
There is something very special about the designs of these tags. Now viewed in an entirely new context, decades since when they were originally tied around baggage handles and sent on their merry way through airport carousels. It's this strong sense of nostalgia and adventure, as well as their striking typography and graphic design that inspired me to start collecting them, and now to re-create and share them with you as over-sized pieces of art."

The project was successfully funded through Kickstarter and here's the original link:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/904917574/around-the-world-six-limited-edition-screen-prints
Tom Love is an accomplished designer who has worked with many of the top design agencies and is currently a senior designer at SalterBaxter. Tom has recently started producing his own limited editions and this is the third project he has completed, so far.

The prints have been screen-printed in 3 colours by Gary Parselle at Brighton based silkscreen studio, The Private Press, and these are the pictures from the studio when they were in the drying racks:

The paper chosen for the project is our Flora, Betulla in 350gsm. Flora is a recycled paper (and FSC accredited) with an overtly recycled look and feel - it has natural, deliberately visible inclusions and yet still prints beautifully. It truly enhances the look and feel of a project such as this where the visual look of the material makes a massive difference to the aged look of the finished piece

 

Thanks to Tom Love and Gary Parselle at the Private Press for sending me the images and giving me all the information.

...and you can buy these prints now, on the following link:
http://tomlovecreative.com/screen-prints/

www.tomlovecreative.com

www.theprivatepress.org

Posted by Justin Hobson 24.06. 2014

Felix Dennis. Publisher 1947-2014

Felix Dennis, undoubtedly one of the biggest personalities in British publishing died peacefully yesterday, with his loved ones surrounding him. He finally succumbed to cancer.

After leaving Harrow College of Art in the late 1960's , Dennis became co-editor of Oz, an underground counter culture magazine. Dennis found himself involved in the notorious Old Bailey conspiracy trial against Oz in 1971 for which he was acquitted on appeal after having been imprisoned. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oz_(magazine) He also recorded a single with John Lennon to help fund the court case!


Felix Dennis. Photograph by Lucinda Batchelor 2012

In 1973 Felix Dennis launched Dennis Publishing which pioneered personal computer magazine publishing in the USA and the UK and in 1995 founded Maxim which became the world's biggest selling men's lifestyle magazine. Today, the business is responsible for publishing over 50 magazines, websites and mobile sites, including The Week, Men’s Fitness, evo, Auto Express, PC Pro, Octane and Viz. He didn't limit his opportunities to just publishing, he also co-founded a $2.5 billion computer mail order company called MicroWarehouse. More recently, he transformed Dennis Publishing from a traditional ink-on-paper publisher into a multi-platform content provider with over 250,000 people visiting its websites every day.

In 2008 he rescued one of the last colour book printers in the UK, Butler and Tanner, with it's name changed to Butler Tanner & Dennis, it survived until earlier this year (now in administration). I wrote about BT&D, previously on this blog:
http://justinsamazingworldatfennerpaper.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/ordnance-survey-maps-stay-in-uk.html

More recently Felix Dennis has been a poet. He has written severally critically acclaimed anthologies and been on the road performing his poetry. He has also been a great philanthropist, as you might expect from someone ranked 134th on the Sunday Times Rich list. http://www.felixdennis.com/ and he also planted lots and lots of trees.

Although I never met him, I understand that he was an exceedingly nice guy. A full life well lived.

www.dennis.co.uk
http://www.felixdennis.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 23.06.2014

What is ...Film Lamination?

What is ...Number 6
Regular followers of this blog will know that in the middle of the month, I publish a "What is ....? post. The article covers various aspects of paper, printing and finishing in greater depth. However, many of these subjects are complex, so these posts are only intended to be a brief introduction to the topic.

What is ...Film Lamination?

Film lamination is frequently used in printed literature, but few people give much thought to exactly what it is and the process, so I shall try and tell you a little about it...

The terms "gloss lam" and "matt lam" are the terms most often used to describe film lamination. Basically the process involves gluing an extremely thin layer of transparent plastic to the surface of a sheet, most often used on the covers of brochures, leaflets and books. This thin layer of plastic provides an incredible amount of strength and protects the paper substrate from being damaged or scuffed.

The type of film usually used for this process is called OPP, which stands for Oriented Poly Propylene. The film thicknesses are generally between 12 to 30 microns, so really very,very thin. I have photographed a piece of this gossamer like material to give you an idea of how thin it is.

The film comes in a continuous roll, which is mounted on a laminating machine. Sheets pass through the machine and are covered with the plastic layer over the whole area of the sheet. There are different methods of applying the polypropelene, it can either be applied by a wet glue or by heat, which is called thermal film. Thermal films, already have the glue applied, held in microcapsules which are activated by heat. To the normal onlooker, there is no noticeable difference in the result between the two application methods.

Below is a picture of a laminating machine, where you can see the roll of laminating film and the sheets passing through under it:


Image courtesy of Autobond

So who actually does the lamination? There are a few printers who have their own laminating machines 'in-house' although most film lamination carried out in the design and corporate market is sent out by the printer to a 'trade laminator'. These are companies which just specialise in the area of lamination and 'print finishing', an example is a company called Reflections in London(http://www.reflections.co.uk/)

The vast majority of lamination is gloss lamination or matt lamination, although that is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is actually available.

In transparent films there are a wide range of other finishes, such as Silk, Soft-Touch, Antiscuff, Embossed (leather, linen, pearl etc) as well as a range of biodegradeable and environmentally friendly options. Below is an image of the swatch from one of the suppliers of laminating films, so you can tell from this, just how many types of films are available:

www.graphicimagefilms.co.uk
 

There are also holographic films available and below is an example of an invitation which has been printed CMYK and then film laminated with a transparent holographic film. Very effective!

Printed by: www.principalcolour.co.uk
 

As well as transparent films, there are also metallised polyester films. These are essentially the same type of product but slightly thicker (30/40 microns) and not transparent. As well as different colours (matt and gloss) they can also incorporate holographic and iridescent finishes. The picture above shows a selection of different finishes that are available in these laminating films:

Film Lamination is an incredibly important process used in the print industry. Although it is often perceived negatively because you are effectively putting a piece (even though it is thin) of plastic (which however you look at it is manufactured from fossil fuels) onto a natural product (paper). However it should be remembered that if by applying the film, the publication lasts longer and is used for longer then the environmental impact is somewhat mitigated. Unfortunately it is far harder to recycle printed matter that has been film laminated as the paper and plastic needs to be separated.

Thanks to Graphic Image Films for providing me with samples which helped me write this piece.

www.graphicimagefilms.co.uk
www.autobondlaminating.com

Posted by Justin Hobson 19.06.2014