Growing Through the Seasons

The "Growing through the Seasons" 2025 calendar, illustrated by Isla Middleton and written by Bryony Middleton, is a guide for gardeners and vegetable lovers. 

It features seasonal illustrations of fruits, vegetables, and flowers, along with practical growing tips for each month, including what to sow and harvest.

The calendars are produced on our PaperWise Natural 150gsm and 295gsm, which is manufactured from 100% agricultural waste - this is the stems and leaves left over the harvest and which is usually left in the field and burnt. You can read all about PaperWise HERE. As you can see from the images PaperWise is a natural shade and is completely unbleached and home compostable too ...a perfect choice for this calendar!

The calendar also includes a full growing chart at the back, providing an overview of the sowing and harvest schedule for the year. 

The calendars are 300mm square in size and are beautifully printed, offset litho by Ashley House Printing in Devon.

Although it's too late for this year, I believe there are plans for a 2025 version, so you can look on the website here: www.islamiddleton.co.uk

Posted by Justin Hobson 21.08.2024

Updated Inclusion range...

Up-Cycling is an increasing trend in the paper industry. This means using waste materials, destined to be thrown away, to create new and valuable objects. Here, we value up-cycling and strongly believe reprocessing raw materials is of great importance to us all, as it will be even more so in the future! Two great examples are grass paper – made from grass waste – and coffee paper – made from coffee waste.

We have an updated swatch showing the range:

Inclusion Coffee has a totally unique look and the obviously recycled character make it the perfect material for both packaging and printing applications that stand out. Upcycled coffee waste and 100% post-consumer recycled paper fibres give it a spectacular visual effect and an overtly recycled character. It has 5% residues from coffee processing added during the papermaking process. This content is comprised of coffee peel, which falls during coffee roasting and is sourced locally to the mill from facilities in Holland and Germany. 

Inclusion Coffee is now available in 100, 120 250 and 350gsm. It is made using 100% recycled, post consumer waste, with the addition of 5% residues from coffee processing, the resulting effect is really unusual as you can see from the image below (biro in shot for scale!) and every sheet is unique.

Inclusion Grass (below pic) contains 30% sun-dried grass and 70% post-consumer recycled paper fibres and is available in 120gsm text weight only...

The sun-dried grass is sourced from fallow land – which is left unplanted for a season resulting in a fast-growing raw material, protecting natural resources and the environment. The grass is turned into pellets which requires less energy, water and chemicals than the production of woodpulp. The grass pellets are produced in Germany ensuring short delivery to European paper mills, reducing CO2 emissions.

As you can see from the images above, the extraordinary use of these inclusions combined with 100% Recycled fibres ensure that every sheet of paper is truly unique - so be warned, the visual effect can and will vary from batch to batch!

Posted by Justin Hobson 12.08..2024

Jobs from the past - Number 177

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 - this project is from 2016.

Reach, Presentation, Service & Expertise 2016

Established by Albert Hill and Matt Gibberd in 2004,The Modern House is the UK’s foremost estate agency for houses and apartments of outstanding design and they have a passion for modern architecture. This is their company brochure (titled "The Art of Selling Architecture") which sets out to explain who they are, what they do and how they do it - Reach, Presentation, Service and Expertise.

Click on images to enlarge

The cover is simply hot foil blocked in black foil and nothing on the back cover - it's wonderfully minimal. Size of the brochure is 280 x 230mm, portrait and is saddle stitched. It has an 8pp cover with 160mm wide flaps. The cover is printed and hot foil blocked Fabrique Moderne, Grey 200gsm which has a lovely textured 'watercolour' look and feel.

The text materials chosen are a combination of Omnia White 120gsm and Tree Free Bamboo Cream, 120gsm for the text (black only) There are 28pp in total with 12pp on the Omnia.

Click on images to enlarge

As you can see from centre spread above, the images have reproduced brilliantly on the Omnia, with the combination of exterior and interior photography. The Modern House have used Omnia many times, so they know just how good the combination of tactile feel and excellent reproduction is. Detail of interior image below...

The correct selection of weights, means that the 28pp text flows beautifully

Black type looking good on the Tree Free Bamboo, Cream 120gsm - made using 75% bamboo and 25% cotton - that's 100% non tree fibres!

A lovely touch is the black wire used for the saddle stitching. Works beautifully with the hot foil blocking in black on the front cover...

The superb art direction and design is by Tom Watt at Field Projects. Print was by Push Print who went into administration in 2021.

https://www.themodernhouse.com/

http://field-projects.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 05.08.2024

Mailer and wall art in one!

Rampton Baseley is a market leading estate agent in South West London. Established in 2008, they now have five offices around the commons of south London and consider themselves experts in the local patch. This piece of literature is one of a series of promotional pieces - and this one is part mailer/door drop and part wall art!

The size is 148x140mm and is a 12pp concertina, folding out to 297x420mm.

You can see from the image below, the way it folds...

It is printed offset Litho in CMYK on our Omnia 120gsm, which gives it a lovely tactile feel and the images have reproduced superbly.

...and then on the reverse is revealed this superb piece of wall art...

Click on image to enlarge

It looks just brilliant on the Omnia.

...and the best thing about the map is the lack of branding, which as you can read below was well considered -  what a great idea!

Printed offset litho by Typecast Colour in Paddock Wood, Kent.

http://www.typecast.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 30.07.2024

Modern Poetry in Translation 2024

This is the latest edition...

Cover art by Liliana Dmitrovic

Modern Poetry in Translation (MPT) is a magazine, originally founded by Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort. The first issue, published in 1965 was a 12pp broadsheet printed on a Bible paper and cost 2s 6d! MPT presented poems by a wide range of authors, particularly from Eastern Europe introducing them into a wider circulation in English in the West. The original designer of the publication was Richard Hollis, continuing until 2004.

This issue titled ‘Bearing the Burden of Sameness’ spotlights the poetry of care. Featuring Rachel Rankin’s new translations of Brynjulf Jung Tjønn’s experiences of adoption in Norway, the myth of the Chinese river snail reborn in Tuoya Wulan’s version of Xinyang Wu, and Beth Hickling-Moore’s translation of Carla Nyman’s radically physical poetry of the body. Also: brand new translations of Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish by Kareem James Abu-Zeid, Olga Ulturgasheva on Siberian animist poetry, and Jenny He interviews Fiona Sze-Lorrain. 

The magazine is 215x140mm, portrait. The 114pp text is all printed offset litho on our Offenbach Bible 60gsm and printed in 2 colour, burgundy and black throughout with an overall tint over some of the sections. Images are reproduced as halftones. The publication is perfect bound.

This is a really lovely piece of literature which feels good in the hand and is definitely one of those publications which invites the reader in. It flops and flows beautifully.

The perfect binding is nice and neat as you can see below...

Design is by Brett Evans Biedscheid. Print is by Wakefield based Charlesworth Press.

https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/

https://www.charlesworth.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 22.07.2024

Colorset has 37 shades

For those of you not familiar with Colorset, it is our range of coloured text and cover papers which is 100% recycled and more competitively priced than some other well known brands of coloured paper!

A few years ago we launched 350gsm, so we now have ALL Colorset shades in 120gsm, 270gsm and 350gsm - all in B1 size (700x1000mm). 

A few years ago we further developed the range with 9 new colours, making this a collection of 37 shades.

The new shades include five light shades and three deep shades. The new shades are Blush, Warm White*, Glacier, Storm, Nautic, Hopsack*, Charcoal*, Spearmint* and Deep Blue (Note: four of the new shades with an asterisk* are virgin fibre)

...so there you have it, a range with 37 colours including SEVEN greys!

If you would like the updated swatch, please drop me an email and I'll pop one in the post justin@fennerpaper.co.uk

Posted by Justin Hobson 17.07.2024

Have bike (& printing press) will travel!

Nick Hand, designer and letterpress printer at the Department of Small Works in Bristol, is embarking on another of his epic cycle rides... 

As Printweek reports...

Cycling printer Nick Hand will return to the road for a new tour of the UK on his custom-built letterpress bicycle. Armed with an Adana 8x5 letterpress affixed to his custom-frame bike, Hand will make three cycling tours to visit public libraries throughout the UK.

At each library, Hand will print bespoke bookmarks that celebrate each library, and famous figures who used them.

Now 67, he is an experienced hand at touring the Adana press, having pedalled his press-bike hybrid all the way to printing progenitor Gutenburg’s birthplace in Mainz, Germany in 2014; from Land’s End to John O’Groats in 2017; and most recently around festivals throughout the UK in 2022...

You can read the full Printweek article HERE.

https://www.departmentofsmallworks.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 08.07.2024