A talented Illustrator - Ciara Phelan

I just received an e-mail from a talented new designer/illustrator, Ciara Phelan. She has recently gone freelance, based in London.

Although we've never met, I like her work! Have a look: www.iamciara.co.uk.

Invitation to a wine tasting...

This is an example of a beautifully executed invitation done by an agency in Edinburgh that I work with called Touch.

It's A5 in size and just very simply foiled in two colours on our Monoblack 1400mics (...yes that's nearly 1.5mm thick!) Lovely typography and foiled to a very high satandard by IST printing services in Ayrshire.

...and thank you, Chris, for the lovely note.

www.penfolds.com

www.thetouchagency.co.uk

www.istprintingservices.co.uk

Back on the grid

I just wanted to welcome Chris Wigan back to the UK. Chris took a year off and has been working and travelling South America, where apparently the steak is pretty good!

Chris is well know for being the creative behind ‘Change the World for a Fiver’ and ‘I’m Not A Plastic Bag’ whilst a partner at Antidote. I first worked with Chris at Johnson Banks, then at Circus, Antidote and most recently at Dave.

He's now the new creative director at ethical communications agency Provokateur, have a look...
http://www.provokateur.com/e/1/index.html

Fashion Rations!

This is a really fun piece of internal communications for fashion retailer, Whistles. They run a scheme where staff members can offer a limited "friends and family" discount. They coined the phrase "fashion rations" and decided to produce some ration book style booklets in a small "ladies purse" size.

Importantly, they wanted the pages of "stamps" to be perforated and on a gummed paper. Well many of you won't know that we keep a gummed paper in stock at Fenner Paper called Novafix (and are the UK distributors for Swedish manufacturer Artinova).

To complete the ration book feel, the booklets were "stab stitched" (that's where the staple goes through the whole book, from front to back - like a cheque book - although the term cheque book binding normally implies, the application of binding tape over the stab stitches).

The size of the book is A7 (105x74mm) portrait, with Idaho Blu Sky, 216gsm for cover with 3 leaves of perforated stamp pages on Novafix white 80gsm.

A particularly nice touch is that the front of all the books are "crash numbered" on the covers. For those of you who aren't aware of this process, it is an old letterpress process which uses a numbering box on a platten. It is an "impact" process which simply thumps the number on the sheet and then (in a clockwork style) clicks on one digit.

Print production was done by PrintStation, based in Bexhill in Sussex (carole@print-station.biz).

The job was designed in house at Whistles by Jess Hilton ...thank you Jess for the nice note.

http://www.whistles.co.uk/

What a lovely surprise!

I've just had a lovely surprise this morning. Not only have I received a letter (that's not just a dig at the post office, it's just that in this e-mail age, I hardly ever receive a proper letter these days) but it's also a really nice thank you letter!

It turns out that we supplied one of our materials (called Kapok) to Richard Harnasz, who is a student at LCC (School of Printing and Publishing) and this, in part, helped him on his achievement of winning the 2009 Printweek Student of the Year award!

http://www.printweek.com/news/945968/

I wrote about the Printweek awards (see post 20.10.2009) but hadn't realised that Richard had won the Student award. Anyway, congratulations on the award Richard and thank you for taking the time and trouble to write.

richard.thewatchthisspaceco@gmail.com

B&W success at 2009 Roses Design Awards

On Friday 23rd October it was the 2009 Roses Design Awards held in Nottingham. Particularly worthy of note is B&W Studio in Leeds as they collected five awards at the 2009 Roses awards, including the Chairman's award ...well done Lee and Steve.

have a look at their work: http://www.bandwstudio.co.uk/

The awards site:

http://www.thedrum.co.uk/events/61-roses-design-awards-2009

Jobs From The Past - Number 2

Regular followers will know that my first post of every month is a "job from the past" (see post on 01/10/2009), so that I can show some of the memorable jobs from times past.

Life 5/2/96 ERICSSON "you only have one life - live it"


This is an amazing job which still looks and feels as fresh as it did thirteen years ago! Produced in 1996 by Imagination for Swedish mobile phone manufacturer Ericsson. This was a piece of literature to accompany the trade stand at the CeBIT telecommunications show. The Creative Director was Stuart Jane and the Designer was Melissa Price with photography by the in-house team at Imagination.

The journal documents a working day in the lives of 7 European professionals and shows how Ericsson products "provide freedom, flexibility and control"! It is written in both English and German.

The job is 240x320mm Portrait, saddle stiched. It is printed on our Neptune Unique but has an unusual combination of weights with 4pp cover on 300gsm with 16pp on 200gsm and 20pp on 135gsm with an irregular order for the weights - works really well.

The job was printed by a company called Litho-Tech based in Kennington, London who at the time was one of the leading corporate printers in London if not the UK. Sadly like many printers of that era, the company no longer exists. It was printed offset litho in six colours. My notes aren't completely clear but I think the run was either 5,000 or 10,000 copies. Peter Roberts was the sales executive, Les Baker, the production manager and Paul Watson the Managing Director.

This was still in the very early days of using high quality uncoated text and cover materials for corporate communications but certainly Neptune Unique worked extremely well with the double hit vibrant green on the cover and gunmetal metallic silver special printed on the inside.

So where are they all now? The designer on the project, Melissa Price is at Cartlidge Levene. Creative Director, Stuart Jane is at Venture Three. Peter Roberts, who was the sales executive at printers Litho-Tech who handled the job, now runs his own print management company called Urban Life Support and Les Baker is now Works Manager at St Ives, Westerham Press. As for the others, if you know, let me know....

http://www.ericsson.com
http://www.imagination.com
http://www.venturethree.com
http://www.cartlidgelevene.co.uk
http://www.urbanlifesupport.com
http://www.st-ives.co.uk