The American School in London

This is a beautifully designed and produced "mini" prospectus for The American School in London. Design is by Powell Allen. Copy by Howard Fletcher is combined with some splendid portraits and photography by the wonderful Phil Sayer.

There is a strange thing about this job which I can't explain. I have just measured it to give the dimensions and was very surprised to find it is 150x210 - or in other words pretty much A5! BUT it just doesn't feel like an A5 job at all - if you had asked me before I measured it I would definitely have said it felt squarer, definitely portrait, but certainly squarer. Looking at it now I wonder if I get that feeling because the dustjacket isn't full height, coming in at only 180mm high? ...maybe - we shall never know!

Anyway, the dustjacket (on which the type is beautifully foiled in Orange and Grey) works very cleverly with the cover images.

Inside, the book is divided in sections by age with the text being on smaller "tipped in" sections (180x130mm) - again maybe this adds to the square feeling?

And now for the paper plug! It is printed on our Neptune Unique FSC , with a 300gsm Cover, 135gsm Text and 120gsm tip in leaves.

Print is by Push

http://www.asl.org/

http://www.powellallen.com/

http://www.philipsayerpartnership.com/

http://www.howardfletcher.co.uk/

http://www.push-print.com/

It's Nice That - Issue 2 - out NOW!

Yes, issue 2 of It's Nice That is out now - and if you pre-ordered your copy, you will also have received your Rob Ryan screenprint as well.

There's some amazing stuff in here, far too much to list but my particular favourite is the "camouflage" by Noma Bar (page 90/91).

Production details are all as my post for Issue#1 (25/06/2009) except for the colour of the Colorset on the cover.

Nice one again Alex and Will!

http://www.itsnicethat.com/

2010 Year Planner

The lovely Anna Fidalgo from Crispin Finn has sent me this excellent 2010 year planner. It is a full 700x1000mm (B1) size and is hand printed, silkscreened in two colours. The planner is produced on our Colorset 100% Recycled 120gsm in White.

It comes beautifully packaged in it's own brown paper bag and closed with a Crispin Finn seal.

A chance to get really organised for next year...

It looks far to nice to put on the wall and write on! ...but I will. Every good design studio should have one of these on the wall next year - and luckily you can, because they are available on the Crispin Finn website!

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

...there's a lovely Tea Towel as well but I haven't got a picture of that yet - a great Christmas present idea!

http://www.crispinfinn.com/

'Mr Álmos' Big Pen Ship'

...nothing to do with paper but I thought this might be of interest:

'Mr Álmos' Big Pen Ship'Illustration Show

From the 22nd - 26th October 2009

The Rag Factory - 16 Heneage Street - London - E1 5LJ

For artists details, other stuff to look at

check out - http://www.bigpenship.blogspot.com/

Reinventing the Square

This is a superbly produced little book called "Reinventing the Square". It is designed and published by ico Design.

The project was overseen by ico Founder Niall Henry. Creative Director is Ben Tomlinson, Design Director is Vivek Bhatia and the writer is Gerard Ivall.

This publication is about ico's work on the branding of Dolphin Square, a 1930's residential development in London which has been redeveloped over the last few years. The book looks into the branding of the building including the sub-brands: Dolphin House, Dolphin Bar & Grill and Dolphin Fitness Club.

It will be of great interest as a reference source for anyone looking at branding or re-branding a property development.

The book is175x125mm and has 52pp. It is printed on our BrandX FSC 150gsm (this is part FSC virgin fibre and part recycled). The material was chosen so that it would not be bright white and give the historical mono images a period feel whilst still giving a bright vivid reproduction for the new images showing the new brand at work.

Now the really clever production thing about this job is that every spread also folds upwards to reaveal an 8pp "broadsheet" type spread. The spread below then folds up to reveal....
this spread...

It has been very well printed and finished by printers FS Moore. Keith Arnold handled the job at Moores. Bearing in mind that every section has been back to back laminated, it has been done really superbly and certainly my copy is perfect (...as I'm sure they all are!)

The good news is that they have been published with an ISBN number and are available to buy at a very reasonable cover price of £9.99. It's worth buying to see the finishing alone!

http://www.icodesign.co.uk/

http://www.mooreprint.co.uk/

Stella McCartney

This is a stunning lookbook for Stella McCartney's new range of sports clothing for Adidas.

Design is by Made Thought.

The job is 230x163mm Portrait and is 72pp and is printed on Omnia 200gsm and 120gsm.

As you will see from the spreads below, the photography (by Tim Barber) really conveys energy and style. Even though the book is divided into eight sporting sections, the design creates lots of space and an uncluttered feel.

The repro, print and finishing is also amazing - by Push. They have made very best of these excellent shots making the printed images really alive and working incredibly well with the substrate.

The finishing requires a special mention. It has an "open" section sewn binding. This is where the book is finished as a conventional section sewn block but glue is applied without the "text block" being placed into a cover. This gives an interesting and unusual effect, which I have seen before but not as well executed as on this job.

...and here are some close ups of the binding:


http://www.adidas.com/campaigns/stellaSS09/content/index.asp?strCountry_adidascom=uk
www.push-print.com

www.madethought.com

...and you think you have a big collection of print!

I've just been reading an article in Printweek by Caroline Archer who's a "print historian". Apparently one of the largest (if not the largest) collections of printed ephemera in the world was collected by John Johnson, printer to the University of Oxford (1925-1946). It is housed in the Bodleian Library and numbers over one million items.

Most importantly this collection is of "jobbing" work such as leaflets, flyers, posters, labels, tickets not books or periodicals - pretty impressive - certainly competition for lots of designers that I know are serial collectors (of stuff)!

Jobs From The Past - Number 1

By their very nature Blogs are concerned with the now and the new. However, several people suggested that I should write about older pieces of work (which is a nice idea) BUT, so I don't fill the blog up with loads of old stuff, I will make the first post of every month a job from the "archive". So this is the first of the "Jobs from the Past" ....

Crafts Council Annual Report 1992/93 "Serving the public"

This beautiful Annual Report was produced in 1993 by Pentagram. Design Director is John Rushworth, the designer is Nick Finney and the photographer is Giles Revell.

The size of the job is 272x348 Portrait and it is a 40pp self cover, saddle stitched. 3,500 copies were printed.

The job is printed Duotone (using two blacks) and is printed on Neptune Unique 135gsm.
This is a really special job, one of those rare times when the quality of the art direction, design, photography, repro, print and material all come together in equal measure. Below are a few of the spreads.....


The job was printed by a company called Penshurst Press based in Tunbridge Wells. Sadly the company is no longer around. Alan Flack who was the printer who actually physically printed this job left Penshurst with Martin Darby to form their own printing company called Principal Colour. Barry Wright who was the Sales Director has left the industry (unless anyone knows differently?) and David Holyday who was the Managing Director still is active in print as a consultant.

This job was written about in Lithoweek printing magazine (27/05/1994) where the richness of the duotones and the use of an uncoated material praised (bear in mind that using uncoated for this type of literature was relatively unusual at this time)

It was around this time that Mohawk and Monadnock (papers both produced in the USA) were starting to make some inroads in to the UK market. The US were well ahead of the UK in terms of using uncoated materials for high quality literature and corporate publications. In 1993 we (at Fenner Paper) started having Neptune Unique manufactured for us in Europe and we were pleased to get this particular order as one of our first (this job wasn't actually the first - that was another job for Pentagram designed by Vince Frost for The Fourth Estate - but that's another story...)

The report was an unqualified success. I received a letter from the Chair at the Crafts Council saying how pleased they were with it and thanking us for our involvement:

...and below is the D&AD 1994 Awards supplement, as this job won a well deserved Silver Award for Annual Reports.
I hope this has been interesting for you reading it. I can tell you that this job still looks and feels fantastic today and bearing in mind it was produced "the old fashioned way" using scanned photographic prints and film to hand made (manually exposed) plates it is amazing - although maybe it's because it was produced that way it has such a great quality.
I have credited those people that were involved as best as I am able:
http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/
http://www.pentagram.co.uk/
http://www.nbstudio.co.uk/
http://www.gilesrevell.com/
http://www.principalcolour.co.uk/
d.holyday@googlemail.com

Justin is a papermaker, as well!

I was going through some stuff last night and found this picture. It's a Polaroid (remember them?!) of me making paper by hand ...back in 1997!

For those unfamiliar with the process, I have dipped my frame which has a wire mesh over it, into the stock (pulp fibres in water) and am attemting to shake it to evenly spread the fibres. I recall this wasn't too successful as I ended up with a sheet of paper that was about 400gsm one end and about 60gsm the other - but you can't say I didn't give it a shot!

This was taken at the old Stora Papyrus Gryksbo mill in Sweden in their hand-made paper studio.

When is BOB! not BOB?

...Just read a very interesting Thought For The Week (TFTW) by Michael Johnson about company naming and the intellectual property of that name. It's well worth a look...
http://www.johnsonbanks.co.uk/thoughtfortheweek/index.php?thoughtid=494

Heart

Many of you will probably have already received this lovely set of promotional pieces from illustration agency HEART. They have produced this series of A4 concertina folded items to

promote illustrators such as Ben Kirchner, Barry Falls and Nick White, both in the UK and USA.

They are all printed on StarFine White 240gsm. Illustration is not always the easiest thing to get right, printing on uncoated materials, but if you've seen these, I think you'll agree, they are really well produced.

Printing and repro is by David Holyday (d.holyday@googlemail.com)

www.heartagency.com

Roksanda Ilincic for Whistles

This is a lovely mailing piece from fashion retailer Whistles.

It is A5 size and the pages are formed by a long perforated concertina which fold into the cover. Printed on Omnia 280gsm.

It is designed "in house" at Whistles by designer Jess Hilton and photography is by Ben Weller.

....and thank you for the flowery note from Jess and Kate which is hand illustrated!

www.whistles.co.uk

The Birds by Paul Farrell

Thank you to Paul for sending me this lovely new collection of cards, all using our Colorset recycled board.

They are not printed (in the traditional sense) but all foiled using coloured foils - this is very interesting as few jobs I see involve printing colour on colour (as I guess designers can be unsure of the outcome) let alone colour foil on colour material.

As part of the London Design Festival, Paul has an exhibition at The Old Sweetshop Gallery (in SW18) which runs until 27th September.

http://www.theoldsweetshop.org/paul_farrell_the_birds_and_the_trees.htm
http://www.paul-farrell.co.uk/

Hero - Issue1

Here is a new zine which is aimed at bringing fresh new international model talent to the fashion world - "THE FACES OF TOMORROW'S FASHION"

Designed, edited and published by James West & Fabien Kruszelnicki. The list of photographers is too long to list unfortunately but there are some really superb images in this job.

And here's for the boring bit ...it is 210x275mm, portrait, perfect bound with a 4pp cover and 98pp text. It is printed on our lovely uncoated StarFine White 270gsm and 115gsm.

Print is by Push.

Here are samples of just a few spreads:

http://www.hero-zine.com/

http://www.push-print.com/

Erika's Cards

I first met Erika when she was working at Pentagram in John Rushworth's team back in the mid nineties (I know that's quite a long time ago now!). Even though Erika returned to Sweden with her young family we have still stayed in touch and she now lives and works in Stockholm.

Below are pictures of a fantastic range of cut out letter cards which is an idea that she had years ago and she has finally produced them - and I think they're great (...they aren't even on our paper and I still think they're great!)

e.rennel.bjorkman@telia.com

Rich Fairhead

I popped in to The Chase today and ended up having a chat and a cuppa (thanks Oli) with illustrator Rich Fairhead, so I took the photo opportunity to show you him and some of his work...

The alphabet and his robot illustrations are fantastic.

Check out his site at www.richfairhead.co.uk