The Modern House - postcard set

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.

Click on images to enlarge

The concertina is printed on Redeem 100% Recycled 315gsm, which prints beautifully 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 Keyprint Printers.

https://www.themodernhouse.com/

http://field-projects.com/

sales@keyprinters.co.uk

Posted by Justin Hobson 19.05.2022

St Bride Wayzgoose this coming Sunday

This coming weekend on Sunday 22nd May it will be the 6th LIVE annual St Bride Foundation WAYZGOOSE (during Covid there have been virtual events). A Wayzgoose is a term (unfamiliar to most people) that used to refer to an annual holiday in a print-works and was often an away-day to the coast or some other sort of day out, more often than not, paid for by the firm. In this instance the St Bride Wayzgoose is a kind of letterpress 'bring and buy' sale.

It is a chance for a large number of people who love printing, letterpress, type (and of course, paper!) to get together, as you can see from a picture below from a previous year...

Every year I run the Fenner Paper stall, where we sell offcuts and leftovers with the money raised donated to the St Bride Foundation. In 2019  we raised a record breaking £357! For interest, this is the way my stall usually looks like...

https://It's open from 11am until 4pm - I look forward to seeing you there!

The poster is printed on our Colorset Lemon 270gsm by the Chapel at the St Bride workshop. 

https://www.sbf.org.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 16.05.2022

Amazing Cocktail Menu!

Today is World Cocktail Day! ...so what better day than to show you this amazing cocktail menu, which is a stunning piece of paper engineering:

This menu for Scarfes Bar is a highly memorable and interactive piece, featuring 14 music-inspired cocktails.

The menu was illustrated by Gerald Scarfe and based around a Victorian toy theatre with a back drop and moveable wings depicting an empty Scarfes bar. Different types of music are listed on tabs on both sides.

As you pull a tab that relates to a particular genres, so a musician or exponent of that genre glides across the stage into the bar – and the appropriate cocktails are revealed, as you can see below...

The size of the menu is 175x230mm (plus the 10mm tab). The menu is constructed from paper covered over board and each of the menu cards is paper mounted onto our Sumo Black 1mm thick board and the menu pages are held by just four brass binding posts which move along punched slots.

Designed is by Rivington Bye who work with many premium brands, principally in the hospitality sector.

Printing and production is by Fenton Smith at PrintSmith and I can't stress just how well produced this construction is, it really is superb.

What a great day for a cocktail...! https://www.daysoftheyear.com/days/world-cocktail-day/

https://scarfesbar.com/

https://rivingtonbye.com/

https://printsmith.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 13.05.2022

Stardream - print processes book

Stardream is a market leading pearlescent and metallic paper range produced by the Cordenons paper mill in Italy. Many designers and printers have become fans of the light irridescent finishes and the dual sided deep metallic finishes which do truly shimmer. Stardream is used for a wide range of applications, including cover, presentation folders, invitations, greetings cards and luxury packaging.

This is the new "Print Processes book" which demonstrates the wide variety of print processes that you can achieve using this paper range.

The cover image is printed offset litho in CMYK on Stardream Copper 285gsm and the result is stunning - just look how good a CMYK image can look, even on a relatively deep shade such as the Copper. What many people forget is the litho inks are transparent, what this means is that if you print on a colour, the colour will come through and it also means that if you print on a pearlescent/metallic substrate, the printed result will be pearlescent/metallic and take on the shimmer of the surface printed on.

The size of the presenter is 230x220mm and the wiro-bound inserts are 210mm square. The first page is hot foil blocked using Foilco Ref 6815 copper foil on Stardream Anthracite 285gsm.

Click on images to enlarge

Page two is is printed using Thermographic printing (thermography) in red and black.

Thermo (as it is commonly called) is a great process and can produce a gloss or matt raised surface. In this instance, the result is a gloss finish, printed on Stardream Rose Quartz 120gsm

Stardream is also suitable for digital print processes and the below rainbow image is printed on Stradream Crystal Digital 240gsm on an HP Indigo Press

The next page is french folded and is lasercut...

Click on images to enlarge

The sample printed on the Stardream Silver (above & below) is just the most simple and yet effective sample. It is printed in just 1 colour offset litho as a halftone (or some people refer to it as a montone) and as mentioned before, because litho inks are transparent, the printed result is pearlescent/metallic and takes on the shimmer of the Stardream surface.

and the grand finale of the book, really is amazing at is is the simplest, yet crazily effective process. The below watchface is digitally printed in white using a dry toner press (this was a Ricoh)

...and here is a detail image

...and below shows the deep blue colour (Stardream Lapislazuli 285gsm) that it was printed on.

Digital white (toner) is an incredibly stunning effect and a very economical price, so it's definitely worth looking into.

My thanks to the paper mill, Gruppo Cordenons for supplying us with the tools to show the Stardream range in the very best light. If you would like one of these new books, please email me: justin@fennerpaper.co.uk

http://www.cordenons.co.uk/
http://www.gruppocordenons.com/en/

Posted by Justin Hobson 11.05.2022

Mondi announces Russia Exit

I have written on this blog before about the fact that Mondi was supporting the Russian economy and their war machine by continuing to manufacture paper in Russia. The good news is that Mondi has finally confirmed that it plans to divest its Russian operations because of the country's invasion of Ukraine.

Mondi has a substantial presence in Russia with a net asset value of nearly €700m (£600m), and have been reviewing options for their Russian operations since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

It's a tough decision but I think we can all appreciate it is the right thing to do. Well don to the Mondi board for making the right call.

You can read the full Printweek article here:

https://www.printweek.com/news/article/mondi-confirms-russian-exit

Posted by Justin Hobson 06.05.2022

Jobs from the past - Number 150

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 this one is from 2012.

V&A Annual Review 2011/2012

Pieces of print like this don't come along every day! This is the beautiful 2011/2012 Annual Review published by the V&A.  The museum celebrated it's highest attendance ever, at 2.88 million! The report is divided into various sections combining the pictures and words about the collections and the life of the museum with a major section on the museum's Futureplan.

The cover is hot foil blocked in a white gloss pigmented foil on a Cool Grey 350gsm material from the well known, Hull based paper merchant!

With image reproduction being so important, it was essential that everything reproduced amazingly! The text chosen for the project is Omnia 150gsm because the print includes solid colours and images of exhibits - and it looks brilliant.

Click on images to enlarge

 

Click on images to enlarge

Size of the book is 265x200mm, portrait format, perfect bound. The 68pp text is printed in CMYK throughout - beautifully. Additionally, there are 4 tracing paper inserts as section dividers and an 8pp coloured section for the accounts.

Generation Press wrote about it on their blog and kindly supplied me with the images. They also showed the foiling die used for the cover - very nice to see...

Design is by Jo Glover. Photography is by David Short and the V&A photography studio.

Print, foiling and finishing is by Generation Press.

https://www.vam.ac.uk/

https://generationpress.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 03.05.2022

Printweek - Paper Supply Crisis

I have written before on this blog about the situation in the paper industry, about the shortages and rapid price increases.

A few weeks ago a very interesting article was written by Jo Francis for Printweek magazine covering the situation, which you can read here... 

https://www.printweek.com/briefing/article/navigating-the-paper-supply-crisis

A particularly interesting part of the article is an explanation of how in less than three years, the industry has lost nearly 6 million tonnes of paper & board production, listing the following mill closures and cuts in capacity:

Cuts to capacity – going, going gone – how nearly 6m tonnes per annum of paper production disappeared

Feb 19: Germany’s Scheufelen files for insolvency for the second time in two years. It had produced 140,000 tonnes of premium coated paper per year

Mar 19: Arjowiggins’ largest mill, Bessé-sur-Braye with capacity of 320,000tpa of recycled coated and uncoated papers goes into liquidation after parent Sequana went into administration

Mar 19: Lecta shuts down coated woodfree production on PM 8 (200,000tpa) at its Condat mill, with the intention of converting it to label and packaging papers

May 19: Stora Enso confirms exit from coated woodfree paper market, removing more than a million tonnes of capacity as a result. The 1.08m/tpa Oulu mill in Finland will be converted to packaging board

Feb 20: Sappi Europe says it will close 240,000tpa coated woodfree PM2 at its Stockstadt mill

July 20: UPM closes its Chapelle newsprint mill in France, which produced 240,000 tonnes of newsprint per year

Aug 20: UPM announces it will shut its Kaipola mill in Finland by the end of the year and decommission its three paper machines, an annual reduction of 450,000 tonnes of newsprint and 270,000 tonnes of graphic grades. It also puts a ‘for sale’ sign up at UK newsprint mill UPM Shotton 

Aug 20: SCA says it will exit the publication papers market

Feb 21: SCA makes its last reel of publication paper at its Ortviken paper mill (756,000tpa) where three paper machines were shuttered and the site switched to the production of chemically pre-treated thermo-mechanical pulp (CTMP)

April 21: Stora Enso plans to close its Veitsiluoto (790,000tpa woodfree uncoated paper) and Kvarnsveden (565,000tpa SC magazine paper) mills in Sweden, slashing annual capacity by 35% to 2.6m tonnes

May 21: Zanders Paper goes into liquidation. It had two paper machines and capacity to make 325,000tpa of high gloss, cast coated paper, label papers, and board

Jun 21: Stora Enso sells its 310,000tpa Sachsen newsprint mill in Germany. The new owners will convert it to make containerboard

Sep 21: Newsprint production ceases at 250,000tpa capacity UPM Shotton. The new owner is converting the mill to produce cardboard

An excellent piece of research by Jo Francis, thank you.I suggest you read the whole article online.

https://www.printweek.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 30.04.2022