St Brides Christmas Lecture - 10th December

The St Brides Annual Christmas lecture is next week and you should think about going!

Brian Webb and Rob Shepherd will be talking about their involvement in the making of the special edition of Under Milk Wood that Sir Peter Blake illustrated to coincide with the Dylan Thomas centenary. The work Blake produced depicting characters and key scenes from the play has been a labour of love as it's taken him just under 30 years to complete – he's created 170 works so far!

© Sir Peter Blake

The artworks were shown in a special exhibition at The National Museum of Wales in Cardiff earlier this year. The Queen Anne Press (once owned by Ian Fleming) has now published various editions of a book showcasing Blake’s work from the exhibition, ranging from a paperback edition priced at £30 and a Fine Binding edition of 10 books priced at £5,500 per copy! The Fine Binding edition is the subject of the talk and you can see the cover design here:

© Sir Peter Blake

Brian Webb is an extremely known designer having been one half of Trickett & Webb and who now runs his own studio Webb & Webb. Rob Shepherd is a book binder, from Shepherds, Sangorski & Sutcliffe, who is responsible for this beautiful fine bound edition.

...and if that weren't enough, there a glass of wine and a mince pie included in the ticket price! Tickets are just £15 (concessions are available). 7pm on 10th December.

You can book (excuse the pun!) here:
http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/to-begin-at-the-binding-brian-webb-and-rob-shepherd-tickets-14261156503?aff=es2&rank=9

http://www.queenannepress.com/dylanthomas.html
http://www.sbf.org.uk/
http://www.webbandwebb.co.uk/
http://www.bookbinding.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 03.12.2014

Jobs from the past - Number 62

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...

The Wapping Project
Diary - 2001

The Wapping Project was, until recently, an arts project housed in the old Wapping Hydraulic Power Station (built 1890). The building originally housed steam operated boilers to generate electricity in the early days of electrification. The works was decommissioned and mothballed in 1977. The building was converted and reopened by the Womens Playhouse Trust (WPT) which is a charity and under the management of Jules Wright, it was opened as an arts centre in October 2000.

The project included exhibition space in the basement and SHED54, where pieces of original equipment are still in place and a restaurant on the ground floor, called WAPPING FOOD, under head Chef Justin Aubrey.

A folded down broadsheet called 'Wapping Diary' was regularly produced to give the information about events and exhibitions. The size of the broadsheet is 420x712mm, folding down to a 32pp 210x89mm.

It was printed in CMYK plus a special - a metallic silvery blue on one side and one colour (special) reverse. It is printed on our Redeem 100% Recycled 80gsm, which is a neutral white recycled paper with enough industrial feel that really worked well for this project with it's mix of heritage and electricity/neon imagery. A beautifully simple piece of literature which just used all the elements correctly and sets this piece miles away from just a 4 colour leaflet on a bit of silk coated paper!

Below is a close up of the way the metallic has worked on the paper:

This project was designed by Frost in London. Creative director was Vince Frost who now runs Frost in Australia and the designer is Sonya Dyakova, who now runs her own studio in London.

It was printed offset litho by FS Moore in London. Richard Davey handled the project and he is now Sales Director at Leycol.

Sadly the building was sold to developers in 2013 and the project has subsequently closed - a great loss for London and the Wapping area.

http://www.thewappingproject.com/
www.atelierdyakova.com
http://www.frostdesign.com.au/
http://www.mooreprint.co.uk/
http://www.leycol.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 02.12.2014

UOP Showcase 2014

You may remember that back in the summer I went to New Designers exhibition, where I wrote about one of the students from Portsmouth University (Eric Downer) who was awarded the coveted "New Designer of the Year" title. http://justinsamazingworldatfennerpaper.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/new-designers-2014.html  I also mentioned that the course showcase publication at the show was printed on our paper and that I would write about it at a later date ...well, here it is!

 

Size is 225x160mm, portrait and is perfect bound. It has a 4pp cover with a 64pp text and has a superb quality and feel about it ...and there a really clever little twist as well!

The covers, which are all printed just one colour - magenta- have been printed on five different colours of our Colorset, 100% Recycled. This is a wonderful 'print design' solution as maximises the impact and the processes used. It looks and feel like you are getting so much more out of a project, but a no extra cost!

All that is required to make this effective, is a design that will work printed in one colour, that can be applied successfully on a range of colours ...and this does just that, beautifully.

The text is printed on our Redeem 100% Recycled 130gsm which is printed beautifully and does great justice to the wide and varied work of the students. Being a neutral white it gives the publication a 'booky' feel which works really well with the imagery.

The catalogue design team is Andy Lethbridge, Ellie Taylor, Ali Bird and Eric Downer and they have done a superb job. The academic team is Sarah Houghton, Andrew Denham, Mike Harkins, Dan McCabe, Estelle Taylor, Alex Tibus.

...and below you can see the striking result of how the different colour covers look, all stacked up at the New Designers show:

Catalogue production and coordination was handled by Sarah Houghton, Course Leader at the University of Portsmouth. Printing is by PPG Print in Portsmouth.

www.port.ac.uk
http://www.ppgprint.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 28.11.2014

Notecards from Velvet Olive

This is a lovely box set of esoteric notecards. Very cool, obscure images, complimented by monotone reproduction on a lovely light grey "raw" board, called Anvil. 

The cards are 4pp cards and are 170x120mm. Printed on Anvil SG 350gsm and are blank on the inside, so they are suitable for any occasion! Eight cards in each box ( two of each)

The cards come with a contrasting envelope, manufactured from our Colorset Lemon (100% Recycled), the gummed envelope with a diamond shaped flap is 173x125mm.

The cards are designed by Kathryn Fletcher, who is the founder of Velvet Olive. Kathryn started publishing cards in 2004 and she now supplies to a wide range of shops and boutiques including Paperchase and Waterstones.

The cards are printed by Graphite Creative who are based in St Albans. Graphite, specialise in the production of Greetings cards and have many 'in house' capabilities. These include die-stamping, hot foil blocking, blind embossing, flitter (that's like glitter), film lamination and they can also do film lamination with effects.

Thanks to Kathryn for sending me the selection of cards.

http://www.velvetolive.co.uk/

http://www.graphite-creative.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 27.11.2014

The arrival of the Dürer Press in London

This is a particularly fascinating project, which if you have any interest in History, you'll be interested in....

Here's the copy which I have lifted from the Dürer press website:
 No records remain of the machine Johann Gutenberg used to print the first books with moveable type. The question of what this press and other early presses were like has occupied the minds of generations of historians. It can never be definitively answered. The person who has probably come closest to a reasonable reconstruction of a very early press is Alan May, a man who has both the knowledge of a print historian and the technical skills of a craftsman. Alan used these abilities to acclaimed effect in 2008 when a television production company gave him the chance to construct a press to print a facsimile page from Gutenberg’s 42-line Bible of the 1450s. The process of research, design and construction of the press was a key feature of The machine that made us, the resulting documentary presented by Stephen Fry.

Following from the construction of this press and from a well-known sketch of a printing press made, probably from memory, by the artist Albrecht Dürer in 1511, Alan made a number of observations about the way presses probably developed from the very first examples. When the Dürer Press Group commissioned a new working press from Alan in 2014, his insights led to a machine that can either be used as a ‘one-pull’ press, as we believe Gutenberg’s was, or as a ‘two-pull’ press. The two-pull configuration is shown in Dürer’s sketch and gives greater output by allowing two pages of a book to be printed without taking the paper out of the press and putting it back in again. It is probable that older, one-pull, presses were modified in this way to give the printer a considerable boost from a machine that would be costly to replace. www.duererpress.co.uk

The press, handmade by Alan May in Summer 2014.

The press has been given a home in the print workshop at the St Bride Foundation in London and there was a launch event on Wednesday 12th November. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend, but here are some pictures of the recent installation of the "new press"!

There aren't many printers in London who can claim to have a 500 year old press, let alone a brand new model!

www.duererpress.co.uk
www.sbf.org.uk

Posted by Justin Hobson 24.11.2014

The Modern House - postcards

Established by Albert Hill and Matt Gibberd, The Modern House is the UK’s foremost estate agency, only selling modernist and contemporary architecture for over a decade.

This is their most recent promotional mailer titled "Selling Britain's Finest Modern Architecture" showing four properties in the format of a concertina postcard book.

  

The format is a 12pp A6 concertina. Flat size is 148x634mm, folding to 148x105mm. The concertina folds into a pre-creased 3mm spine. Printed CMYK offset litho and the cards are perforated.

The concertina is printed on Redeem 100% Recycled 315gsm, which prints beatifully and fits with the modernist, utilitarian architecture.

showing how the concertina folds into the spine

The superbly creased 3mm spine. It's touches such as this - good creasing - that make all the difference to a project like this:

Click on image to enlarge & see perforation

...and the other thing that shouldn't be overlooked is the perforations. As you can see from this picture, perforations can look great, even beautiful. These perfs. only look this good because the designer took the time to explain what he wanted to the printer. There are a selection of different perforation "bars" available at print finishers - so do ask a printer to get samples and to show you different types. If you don't convey your expectations to the printer, then they'll generally use the perforating bar that's on the machine and you may be disappointed.


Art direction and design is by Field Projects. Print production is by Michael Keyworth at Key Printers.

www.themodernhouse.net

http://field-projects.com/

sales@keyprinters.co.uk

Posted by Justin Hobson 20.11.2014

What is ...Laid Paper?



What is ...Number 11

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 ...Laid Paper?

Modern day laid paper is a simulated effect to re-create something that was charcteristic in handmade papers. When paper was made by hand, a frame with a wire mesh was used. The crude wire mesh formed a pattern in the paper and it is this pattern which is now synonymous with the term 'laid paper' today. It was quite often combined with the papermakers mark, which has translated today into what we understand as a watermark.

Today, what is considered as a 'traditional' laid pattern consists of a series of wide-spaced lines (commonly 25mm apart) which are called "Chain Lines" and more narrowly spaced lines which are at 90 degrees to the chain lines, which are called "Laid Lines"

 

Typical machine made Laid paper pattern.

The laid pattern is created during the early stages of paper manufacture using a "Dandy Roll", This skeletal roll made from copper wire with a laid mesh pattern, skims the top side of the paper on the machine at the point that the paper is still very wet. The pattern is pressed on the surface whilst also displacing the fibres causing areas of higher and lower density, this has the result that the pattern is apparent both on the surface and on looking through the sheet. The picture above shows the Dandy Roll on the paper machine and the picture below shows a close up of the mesh type nature of the skeletal Dandy Roll.

There are many types of Laid papers which can made. The Chain lines can be closer together or further apart or only chain lines, as in what is often called "broad laid", pictured below.

...and here are two types of what are often described as "Antique Laid" or "Rustic Laid"

It's worth pointing out that machine made Laid papers are made to a specific orientation, which is dictated by the direction of the machine. The chain lines run parallel to the machine direction and the laid lines run horizontally across the width of the machine.

In recent decades, Laid papers have been used as 'prestigious' stationery although arguably the look is now seen as a bit cliched. It is rarely, but occassionally, used as text and cover papers but often used as end papers.

Posted by Justin Hobson 18.11.2014