Minus 9 Design » production

1/21: For Sale

admin — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 17:29:42 +0000

1/21: For Sale is a brief-in-a-booklet that I wrote and designed for my present Second Year students on the BA Graphic Design course at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London.

This is the final brief of their second year and it ends in a very different sort of ‘Work in Progress’ show. The show (which is actually a non-show) will be a sale of items produced for the brief and sold in a pop-up shop space on Clerkenwell Road – the proceeds of which will go towards their final degree show next year. We have been intentional in not having a usual kind of London work-in-progress show where work is sanitised and glorified, and taken out of its actual context. Instead, the intention is to engage with the audience that London as a city provides – the passers-by and specifically non-designers.

I enjoyed very aspect of the making process of this brief. The research (happily conducted off the books in my library), the writing, the editing (thanks to David Preston and Rebecca Ross who provided useful and clear critique), the design and final production.

The final 24-page booklet contained the brief, timetable but also important and essential readings. It was produced using 80gsm copier paper, laser printed masters, an ancient protesting photocopier, and rubber bands. As this is a brief about designers as producers, I chose typefaces designed by people rather than corporations. I used Archer designed by Jesse Ragan, Tobias Frere-Jones and Jonathan Hoefler for the body text and Leyton, a chunky yet astonishingly readable typeface designed by Ian Moore for the titles.

I was keen to make the booklet as sustainable as possible – working with the recycled copier paper that was available in college and simple rubber bands from Rymans (easier to recycle than staples). Rebecca had the idea to use coloured paper to separate the content – so the yellow part is the brief, and the readings are printed on white paper. On the day of production, I must confess that I struggle not to over design the booklet but to produce it with the materials available – even if they were a strange yellow and an almost-lilac paper and the photocopier toner was exhausted and weary.

Over the weekend I collated each of the 120 copies (1 for each of the tutors and students taking part in the brief), trimmed and cut them by hand. A mad labour of love (resulting in severe tendonitis!) that was intended to convey to students that this was a physical brief rather than an impersonal pdf document, and that tutors do practice what they preach! On the day of the briefing, each of the 7 tutors personalised copies for the students using a simple label space on the cover.

Short run, an illustrated talk

admin — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:26:29 +0000

‘Short run’: experimental book design & London’s little presses was a talk I gave to launch an exhibition of the same name at St Bride Library, London.

Slides from Short run, an illustrated talk

The talk focused on important aspects of little press publishing such as the publisher’s direct involvement in the design and production of their books. The design approach of a little press was largely dependent on the publisher’s available resources and connections that contributed to the unique identity of the imprints.

With these presses, production was an integral aspect of design, and design decisions were directly linked to available production processes and materials. Pursuing low-cost options, little press publishers were inventive in their methods of adding value to books by using coloured papers, alternative forms of lettering and experimental printing techniques.

6,000,000 impressions

admin — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 18:27:53 +0000

6,000,000 impressions: handcrafting the book experience is an exhibition showcasing the process and output of Tara Books, at St Bride Library London. One of the things that make Tara Books unique is their genre of books made entirely by hand.
The enterprise is a fascinating study of craft and mass production. Tens of thousands of titles created in a small workshop in Chennai, India by hand using silkscreen and letterpress and book binding craft techniques are shipped to various parts of the world – LA, Berlin, Moscow, London, Tokyo…. the list keeps growing.

A6 invitation

These are books that, as Gita Wolf, Tara’s publisher puts it, ‘refashion traditional artisanal skills into fine contemporary bookmaking’.

Designing the poster and flyer for the exhibition was fun. Keeping in mind the spirit of Tara’s initiative, the publicity material was entirely (and painstakingly) printed by hand in India on handmade paper. The peacock on the poster is an image by the Gond artist Ram Singh Urveti from the book The Night Life of Trees.

A3 poster