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A new poster. This quote from Eric Gill’s ‘An Essay on Typography’ has long appealed to us. It was a natural to use our Gill Sans wood letter for it. We printed it on Somerset Book Soft White 105 gsm paper, an acid-free mould-made. Soft is a description of the white but it might also refer to its silky feel. We have kept its two deckle edges and torn a third one.
It’s available now from our shop for £50 plus p&p.
We’ve had a lot of fun printing this poster, and we’re rather proud of it.
We started off by setting the wood type and proofing it in black to get position. We then decided on the colours, using our trusty Pantone book as a guide, and set about separating the type for each printing. We checked each colour against the black proof, lining it up on our light box.
Called Tutti Frutti, it’s available from our ebay shop. There are also some more pictures on our Flickr site.
We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.
Hello, regular Hand & Eye readers. This entry isn’t being written by Phil, as he’s downstairs doing some actual work. Instead, this is Nick; I did a couple of weeks’ work experience with Phil back in September/October last year, and I was so successful at bringing biscuits to the workshop that Phil asked me to come to work for him this year. My skills have greatly improved since then, and I now make a pretty good cup of tea as well. This post indicates yet another expansion in my responsibilities, as I’m now in charge of long, rambling musings on whatever work I’m up to.
Enough of me. To business! My old friend Ben Walker is a constant user and champion of social networking sites, and Twitter in particular; you may even have heard his musical observations on the Twitterverse through YouTube (or possibly even the actual radio). Ben is attempting what we believe to be a world first, in integrating mobile blogging, social networking and music performance by putting on Ben’s Big Gig on 1st May this year; if that sounds like an amazing mix of activities, that’s only because it is. Have a look at Ben’s site to find out more aout it. He gave us a call yesterday, asking if we could make him some posters to promote the show around Oxford. Saying, perhaps unwisely, that he trusted me to lay it out as I saw fit, his design brief read…
“Eye-catching is better than classy. Play on high-tech vs. low-tech. Funny is better than good.”
An excellent brief, if ever I heard one. With that in mind, we immediately set to designing with my usual pensmanship.
With such clarity already present in the design, the rest of the process was almost a foregone conclusion, but we felt a little experimentation was in order. It was only a short step from here to a first proof from our wood and metal type…
Turns out that was ok; sadly, there were many more words still to fit on the page.
And yes, after a great deal of tinkering, making ready, changing to silver ink and putting in the words ‘The Funky Llamas’, we were done…
Thanks to Ben for providing us with a great project; if you, dear reader, have an event for which you need a poster, you know how to get in touch. See you all down at The Big Gig…
When we updated our website last year the shop was the least satisfactory part of it. We have now transferred it to ebay, and while the look could be improved, it is easier to manage. We already have our books and posters there, and there is more to come.
