Monday, 10 July 2023
Lana paper mill to close
Friday, 7 July 2023
Blue Angel Certification
Last week our new 'Blue Angel' certification arrived...
Fenner Paper has been certified for many years and I am often telling people about the Blue Angel mark as here in the UK, it is hardly known about or recognised, whereas in Germany (where it was established) and in mainland European countries, it is both highly visible on products and very highly regarded.
The Blue Angel (Der Blaue Engel) is a German certification for products and services that have environmentally friendly aspects. The Blue Angel mark is the oldest ecolabel in the world, and it covers some 10,000 products in some 80 product categories!It was originally conceived and put in place by the government of the former West Germany and has been awarded since 1978. The Environmental Label Jury (Jury Umweltzeichen) is an independent, decision-making body for the Blue Angel and includes representatives from environmental and consumer associations, trade unions, industry, the trade, crafts, local authorities, academia, the media, churches, young people and the German federal states. As a result, it isn't open to political interference, industry pressure groups or vested interests, either from industry or the fanatical green groups. This is the reason that I rate the scheme so highly and it frustrates me that the UK government has never had the guts to put such an independent system in place in the UK - equally it's a shame that there isn't a pan European system.The award of the Blue Angel is preceded by a review of the entire life cycle of the products. Such review considers as many aspects of environmental and health protection as possible for the respective product. Subsequently, the criteria limit or rule out those environmental impacts which are considered to be the most important impacts for the respective product. The Basic Award Criteria for a product are specified for each product group and they are all published.
The Blue Angel covers a wide range of different products including paints, gardening products, construction, electronics and many more, including paper and board.
We carry products which have been awarded the Blue Angel mark. The Creative Print range of 100% recycled text & cover paper manufactured by Koehler Greiz mill carries the Blue Angel mark, as do the majority of the recycled colours in our Colorset range.You can read more about the scheme here:
https://www.blauer-engel.de/en
Monday, 3 July 2023
Jobs from the past - Number 164
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 2014
Jimmy Choo - Bridal 2014
Art direction and design is by the Jimmy Choo in house design team. Print and print production is by Gavin Martin. Printed offset litho in four colour process.
Friday, 30 June 2023
Thread Business Cards
...on our Colorset 100% Recycled board
Design is by Michael Windsor-Ungureanu.
Wednesday, 28 June 2023
Blogtastic!
Thursday, 22 June 2023
Today is World Rainforest Day
As today is World Rainforest Day what better day to have a 'Throwback Thursday' and show you this amazing job for the Rainforest Action Network produced in 2007...
At This Rate is a printed publication produced to highlight the scale of the destruction of the world's rainforests.
Design is by Studio8, Matt Willey and Zoƫ Bather were designers on the project. The amazing photography is by Giles Revell.Click on images to enlarge Inside front cover spread
The book forms a series of spreads which really show off the stunning photography of the skeletal leaves, which look so much like aerial views of cities and make the spreads very powerful. Below is "Every day we lose an area larger than all five boroughs of New York City"
As mentioned before, it is best described as an 8pp cover with a 24pp text, but the text is actually formed by a long concertina (with one join) and the 8pp cover, which has a 10mm capacity spine actually works as a "dustjacket" as you can see in the birdseye pic, below...
It was constructed like this for reasons of both economy and ecology! The whole job actually comes out of one B1 sheet of paper meaning that it was relatively economical from a printing point of view and it was also not wasteful which is in line with the clients aims and objectives.On the reverse of the long concertina, which is hidden from view, is an image taken around the outside trunk of a tree from a tropical rainforest...
It is quite simply a stunning job both from the concept, design, photography, format, printing and finishing. It deservedly won 2008 DesignWeek award for Editorial Design.
The images were offset litho printed as a Tritone with a high density black ink. The repro and superb print is by Granite, who have since gone bust. The material choice is Neptune Unique FSC 200gsm which not only printed fantastically but was also the environmental choice by having Forestry Stewardship Council certification, which was more unusual for fine papers in those days.