The Disasters of Everyday Life

BlainSouthern is a contemporary art gallery with galleries in London and Berlin. It was started in September 2010 by Harry Blain and Graham Southern, who had sold their previous gallery, Haunch of Venison, to Christie's.

For their first exhibition with Blain|Southern, Jake and Dinos Chapman expand on their career-long preoccupation with Francisco Goya’s series of etchings, The Disasters of War. The Disasters of Everyday Life presents, for the first time, their latest body of sculptural work in a dialogue with three full sets of Goya’s prints, each set substantially reworked in a different way by the Chapman brothers. You can read more about the exhibition here.

This is the invitation to the private view held in October. The front of the invitation is an image from the exhibition photographed by Prudence Cuming.

Click on images to enlarge

The invitation is A5 (148x210mm), Landscape and is printed Offset Litho and hot foil blocked on one side. The invitation side, below, is printed in a cool grey solid and is hot foil blocked in metallic gunmetal foil.

Printing is by Identity, based in Paddock Wood, Kent and they have made a superb job of it - colour reproduction and the muted solid colours look superb - the hot foil blocking is perfectly executed (Identity are one of the few printers to have hot foil blocking facilities 'in-house')

The invitation is printed on our Omnia 320gsm and is duplexed (to 640gsm) making it over 1mm thick. The use of Omnia means that the image has reproduced faithfully, however the invitation still has an uncoated tactile feel. The solid grey on the reverse looks and feels great and of course, foiling looks great on Omnia as it has a high bulk and therefore settles into the sheet well.

https://www.blainsouthern.com/
http://www.identityprint.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 15.01.2018

F&F Kids Collection

This is the latest kidswear collection from F&F. This season, the look is stylish trousers and dresses in corduroy, to printed long sleeve tees and shirts, not forgetting the latest on-trend cuts and washes in kids' jeans.

The format is A5 portrait and is saddle stitched with two wires. The cover is on Gmund Bier from that other well known, Hull based, paper company and is beautifully hot foil blocked in a pigmented, matt yellow foil.

The 20pp text (plus 2pp throwout) is printed on our Shiro Echo, Bright White, 120gsm which is 100% Recycled, made by Favini.

Click on images to enlarge

There is a "2pp throwout" at the back of the book, revealing miniature images taken on the same shoot.

The quality of the art direction, photography, repro, print and finishing is superb. The paper also happens to have performed brilliantly - fleshtones and close up detail looking superb, as you can see from the detail image below:

Shiro Echo 120gsm is quite bulky but 28pp sits well without the gap in the middle "gaping" too much.

Art direction and design is by London creative agency Odd. The excellent print, repro and finishing is by Gavin Martin Colournet, based in London E3.

https://www.tesco.com/
http://www.oddlondon.com/
http://www.gavinmartincolournet.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 10.01.2018



The May Fair

The May Fair Hotel was first opened by King George V in 1927 and offers over 400 luxury hotel bedrooms, including 12 suites, a discreet spa, a Mediterranean-inspired restaurant and a Casino. Located in Stratton Street in the heart of Mayfair the hotel also sports the May Fair Bar, breathtaking Crystal Room and opulent Danziger Suite, which between them have played host to some of London's most extravagant 20th Century society events.

This publication shows what the hotel can offer for the Christmas period, from private dining to events and parties. The size of the publication is an elegant tall thin format, which is 313 x 112mm, portrait.

This 12pp 'self cover' is printed on our Omnia 200gsm, which is the perfect weight - it doesn't need a heavier cover weight, it flows and feels good in the hand.

The book is printed Offset litho throughout in CMYK plus a metallic gold pantone 'special' ink. This is one very good reason that Omnia was chosen for this project. On most traditional uncoated papers, metallic inks can look flat and gold can just look a bit brown, but as I hope the images above and below demonstrate, the metallic gold type really does look metallic on Omnia.

The four colour imagery looks superb...

Image reproduction is paramount but it was also important that the publication also projected the tactility of the interiors and in the image below the detail of the table settings and the reproduction of the glassware. An ordinary feeling silk or gloss coated paper wasn't an option, so Omnia fitted the bill perfectly.

Printing is by Stuart Van Den Bergh at Intaglio Communications based in London.

http://www.themayfairhotel.co.uk/
http://www.intaglioltd.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 08.01.2018

GardaPat 13

Some exciting news to start 2018...

 

Fenner Paper are now the exclusive UK distributor of a coated paper range called GardaPat 13. Although this is a new product to us, it isn't a new paper, it has been produced for many years and is the top rated paper for use in the production of high quality photographic books by the well known publishers in Switzerland, Germany and Italy.

 

The paper is manufactured by Cartiere del Garda, a paper mill on the shore of Lake Garda in northern Italy.

New Gardapat 13 swatch

So what makes GardaPat 13 different to other coated paper?

To make it easy, I've summarised it in three points here:

1. It is a genuine, dead flat matt finish.
2. The "13" means it has a 1.3 bulk, so it feels much, much thicker than other coated papers.
3. It comes in three shades, KLASSICA, KIARA and BIANKA

Simple as that, it's beautiful paper!

Gardapat BIANKA is the whitest shade in the range. The original KLASSICA has the warmest shade with KIARA having a more neutral white shade. Contrary to popular belief, studies show that using a higher white paper does not improve colour reproduction, so using a neutral white paper actually increases the colour gamut! Using a sophisticated and warm paper is pleasant for the eye to read and perfect for use both in literature for the arts and luxury brands. Both KLASSICA and KIARA are made without the use of Optical Brightening Agents (OBA’s)

The weight range is from 90gsm and goes up to 250gsm (Bianka only up to 150gsm). Now many of you reading this may be thinking 250gsm isn't heavy enough but you would be wrong! This 250gsm is 325microns thick. To put it into context a normal printers 'house silk' in 300gsm is only 280microns! ...therefore GardaPat 250gsm is as bulky as a 350gsm silk!

If you would like a swatch, drop me an email justin@fennerpaper.co.uk

 

http://www.lecta.com/en/cartiere-del-garda

Posted by Justin Hobson 05.01.2018

Jobs from the past - Number 99

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, but this is actually a fairly recent project...

Middlesex University literature 2015

This is a series of publications produced for Middlesex University by Silver Leopard. The agency were approached to undertake a brand strategy piece of work leading to a revised and relevant visual language. This concluded in a complete and thorough set of guidelines for print, digital and environmental treatments.

 

I've written many articles on this blog which include the phrase "...just the cover makes the difference!" and it is certainly the case for these three publications. All the covers are hot foil blocked on our Colorset 100% Recycled cover board. 

Click on images to enlarge

The Undergraduate Guide, which is the prospectus is an A5, portrait, 76pp publication. The 4pp cover is hot foil blocked in matt white foil on our Colorset Bright Red, 350gsm, with the diagonal die-cut, which is a graphic device used throughout the publication.

8mm thick spine:

Click on images to enlarge

The larger 164pp Graduation publication is 245x162mm, portrait, perfect bound. The cover is hot foil blocked in metallic gloss silver foil on our Colorset Dark Grey 350gsm.

The 148pp Postgraduate Guide is also A5, Portrait and perfect bound. The 4pp cover is hot foil blocked in matt white foil on our Colorset, Nero 350gsm, also with the diagonal die-cut.

Below shows the detail of the diagonal die-cut

Click on images to enlarge

Detail of the matt white foil on the cover:

Image showing the spines of all three publications.

The printing was handled by a print management company on behalf of the university, so unfortunately I don't know the printer or foiling company.

You can read more about this project here.  Silver Leopard continues to act as brand guardians for the University and are involved in many premium outputs including website design, UG and PG prospectuses, campaigns, open days and recruitment.

http://www.mdx.ac.uk/
http://www.silverleopard.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 03.01.2018

Django Django on Colorset

Django Django are a British rock band and I've only just seen these striking posters produced for their second album Born Under Saturn, which was released in 2015.

This poster is A2 size (594x420mm) and is silk-screen printed in two colours onto our Colorset Deep Orange 270gsm, which is also 100% Recycled.

 

The posters were screen-printed by Gary Parselle at Brighton based silkscreen studio, The Private Press.

 

...Awesome

 

http://www.djangodjango.co.uk/

http://www.theprivatepress.org/

Posted by Justin Hobson 27.12.2017

Jimmy Choo AW 2017 Invitation

If you were to think of impossibly high heels, a world renowned brand and a celebrity following as long as your arm, I'm sure you would think of Jimmy Choo. Founded in 1996, they are now one of the undisputed kings of footwear for the fashionable woman and more recently man.

This is a very luxurious looking invitation to the launch of the Autumn/Winter 2017 collection in Milan. The 2pp Invitation is 148x148mm, square is made using our Flockage Colours 400gsm in Black.

 

The front of the invitation, is hot foil blocked onto a British Racing Green shade board, but the exceptional effect on the Flockage Black on the reverse.

For those of you which are not familiar with this product, it is a flocked board which feels like a velvety cloth/material to the touch but which remarkably you can actually "flatten" the pile by use of a  "heat de-boss". In this case the Leopard skin pattern is "heat de-bossed" with a superb result.

Flockage is an expensive material, but because of the small quantity used and the fact that only one process is being used on it (and waste is therefore minimal) a luxury, high impact impression can be achieved for a relatively low cost.

 

To give these invitations extra weight (and gravitas), they have been duplexed together with a black board with the total thickness being over 3mm.

Art direction and design is by the 'in house' studio at Jimmy Choo and the designer on the project is Sinnie Chong. All aspects of production, including the duplexing, hot foil blocking and heat debossing of the Flockage was done by Add Creative, a production company based in Hong Kong and they also made the matching envelope. I think both the green board and the black inners were sourced locally in Hong Kong.

 

http://www.jimmychoo.com/

http://www.addcreative.com/

Posted by Justin Hobson 21.12.2017