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. Given the sad news this week that the Arcadia group has gone into administration, I thought I'd show you this superb project for Topman which is part of Arcadia.
Topman - Spring/Summer 2011
Topman is the Arcadia group's fashion conscious male brand and this piece of literature is produced to the very highest standard with superb art direction, photography and print reproduction - and a few little tricksy surprises lurk within as well!
This lookbook is 350x280mm, portrait format which is just a lovely size - different (not uneconomical either) but just feels right for it's sub A3 and slightly squarer format.
The piece has a 4pp cover and a 68pp text and is perfect bound.
It is printed offset litho in CMYK throughout - colour reproduction is fantastic - solid flat areas of colour work amazingly well as do the mono images. The sense of space in the job is fantastic - the spread below has a completely blank page - an excellent unhurried piece of design for print.
...and here's for the surprise (well three of them actually). There are three smaller (310x230mm) right hand page "throw outs" with closer up detail shots. These are printed on our high gloss, one sided cast coated paper Astralux 115gsm. The images are printed on the gloss side (see below) and the uncoated reverse (see above pic) is printed in a flat solid cool grey.
The below image shows the flat uncoated reverse side of the Astralux, printed grey over the high gloss face side with the CMYK images...
The 68pp text is printed on our Omnia 120gsm which gives it that dead matt, tactile feel but with great reproduction - let the pictures do the talking...
Below is the detail image showing the fantastic reproduction on the Omnia:
For me, one of the joys of this piece of literature is the way it easily flows in the hand. Many designers will use a really heavy cover when producing a document with a substantial number of pages and this can cause disruption with the way the cover interacts with the text - it can be way too flicky! The cover of this job is 200gsm - it is on Omnia, which is a bulky material, but it is the perfect weight.
The cover is beautifully hot foiled blocked in gloss white foil.
...and if that wasn't enough the whole book is inserted into a custom made capacity envelope, also made out of Omnia 200gsm.
Art Direction and design was by
Gill Patchett who worked in-house at Arcadia. Production was by Stephanie Johnson. Photographer is
Boo George with production at
Streeters. Printing was by Ortek printers in Walsall. Gill very kindly sent me some file copies:
So what are people doing now? Arcadia has gone bust this week. Sadly Ortek Printers
went bust back in 2017.
Gill Patchett is now a freelance Art director and Designer ...and Fenner Paper? yep, we're still here doing good stuff!
...and if you'd like to read my original post about this job from 2011 and see how my powers of description and prose have improved, you can read it
HERE.
Posted by Justin Hobson 02.12.2020
Leanne Kitchen said: "Working with I Can Be during lockdown was really important to us, helping them to reach out to the girls they work with and spread their message to children in those really difficult times. With this in mind, we wanted to build on the familiar symbol of hope, simply allowing their imaginations to explore the idea that if a rainbow can be anything, so can they. We'd created such an open brief, with only a couple of compositional guidelines, so that creatives across our network could really inspire the girls to continue to imagine their own possibilities. This charming objective led to some beautifully unexpected illustrations for the colouring book and brought many of our creatives together at a time of isolation. We're also very grateful to have partnered with Identity Print and Fenner Paper to produce Amazebows, who have been integral in enabling the team to gift a physical colouring book to each of the girls."
It was a superb project to be involved with and is the result of amazing collaboration.
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