Printastic

Jess and me spent a couple of really interesting hours with Jim Pennington from Lithosphere printers in North London (www.lithosphere.co.uk). We went originally with a view to just meet and greet another printer, find out what they could do and add them to the list of people we could possibly work with in the future.

In the end we got a lot more. Jim sat us down, made us some tea and told us all about the kind of things printers have to consider and the issues they face when they are working with designers.

One story he told was that designers, with long print runs, should always check work that has been printed overnight with work that has been printed during the day. That’s because the printer working the night shift will be working in very different light conditions to the person on the day shift – something which can affect colour consistency. A good printer will look out for this sort of thing for you.

I’d heard of Lithosphere because they printed the Stop The War posters, designed originally by David Gentleman (see can see the youtube video about how Gentleman designed these here).

They only do a certain amount of printing in-house and will send out some jobs to out-of-London printers that they know are right for the job. They get trade rates for these jobs (which are cheaper because they are not in London). Lithosphere add the value in talking to you about what to consider with regards the paper you are considering, the kind of colours you want to use, etc. He made the point that they can add the most value when people contact them at the beginning of a job when they are considering things like paper and structure. They know GF Smith paper suppliers – but rather than the client buying the paper, Lithosphere buy it.

They don’t handle small jobs for less than £200 but I will definitely try and use them where I can in the future because I know I’ll get real advice based on what’s right for the job.

Jim actually went to LCP back in the day. Small world.

small scales for weighing paper

measuring paper thickness (in microns)

heidelberg 4 colour offset printer in action

heidelberg offset printer

Jim explaining a print job

plates for the offset printer

offset printer controls

proofing desk and printer controls

for calibrating printer colours + plate positions

checking detail through linen glass

Poundland Does Visual Grammar

Gold Snow

Random snow stuff, really. Started with thinking about black and white (visual grammar) compositions using rough edged snow against the dark tarmac. This soon started to include everyday objects with very distinct, often secondary forms (shoe prints, tyre tracks). For my academic contexts piece, I’m thinking about something to do with how rough/natural/accidental/worn forms can combine/coincide with forms which are very deliberate/’straight’ and this sort of fits with that. A bit.

Played with a few in photoshop, just to see what impact texture and colour could have and get to know the software a bit better.  Anything I’ve done is pretty much through the ADJUSTMENTS tab (either the thresholds or gradient map controls).

I didn’t spend a lot of time altering the images (finding the best colours, cropping, etc) but it has given me some ideas for how textures like this could be used in wider design pieces – poster background, logo elements, etc. In its altered form, the snow can look like anything from a virus under a microscope, to calligraphy or marbled paper.

My favourite are the birds’ feet which look like they could be made into a wall paper border. Funnily, each foot looks like a bird or an aeroplane.

Click on the one of the images and it becomes a slide show (apparently).
 

The Omnipresent Straight

I’m very interested in the juxtaposition of geometric forms with handmade, natural or accidental ones. So, after our visual grammar classes over the last couple of weeks, I cut out, ripped and painted some shapes and lines that didn’t have a smooth or clear smooth edge and did some experiments to see what effect there was when they were used in the grid with the more uniform squares and lines we cut out before.

Below are some small observations from that. (Other shapes will come another day).
 

 
Firstly, I found (below) that a line with a rough or uneven edge, even it wasn’t as dense, could have the same ‘presence’ or authority as a line that was more even and uniform. Perhaps when they are all together in the same frame, the weaker lines borrow something from the geometric one. The clear verticals of the frame probably enforce this:
 

 
But I also wonder if there’s something about straightness that we are conditioned to recognise and appreciate, and maybe even look for. Could a straight line be felt, even if not much of it is visible? There is probably something here of the gestalt principle of continuation (or is it closure?); how much of something do we need to see before we assume the rest is there?
 

 
Again, the two marks in the image above look, by inference from the other two lines and the border, as if they could be part of a single line. The top mark also begins to travel downwards, so the idea of it continuing as a line is perhaps an easy one.  Next question: would the broken line be so apparent if it was on a different axis to the vertical?
 

 

Yes, we can see it. As well as support from the support of the horizontal lines of the frame, this form is also the beginnings of a cross, something we know has two strong straight lines. By the time we get to the image below, it would be impossible for you not to see a straight line there. Supporting it this time is maybe the hidden fold line that we know would be there if the frame were folded:

 

 

After this, I wanted to see if this inferred straight line could be ‘broken’ somehow by adding noise:

 

 

Less visible if we remove our marks from any obvious axis?

 

 

I’m super aware that, from the title of this post onwards, I’ve been talking about straight lines. Impossible then, not to look for them.  Maybe test the images out on your Granny or a small child.

What does feel clear though, is this prevalence and presence that straight lines have.  Looking at my laptop and around my desk as I write this, I can see hundreds of them.  They’re so omnipresent that we take them for granted and it’s no surprise that we look for them. And yet are straight lines something found in nature?

Curves and cracks seem to be defined by their difference to the straight.

A trifling thing

Not a great photo so difficult to tell the whole story visually, but came across some badly painted double yellow lines this morning. Difficult not to read on, isn’t it?

Even though there was only a small diversion from their usual strictly uniform and parallel route, in that short distance the silent authority of the double yellows was lost and suddenly they became two uncoordinated marks, each with their own slightly all over the place personalities.

There is also a practical element to this breakdown in visual authority: my driving instructor used to tell me that when you park on double yellows that have been badly painted, if you take a photo of them, you will be let off any related parking fine. The argument goes that if they’re not as you expect them to be, then  you can argue their meaning wasn’t clear to you.

From a different angle, a quick google search reveals some examples of how attractive the lines can look. There are two really nice examples from photographer Jess Hurd of yellow lines as decoration to unusually shaped bits of road.

Ding Dong

Genuwyne 1970’s pitch by Saul Bass, American graphic designer and film maker, explaining the rationale behind a new corporate identity system for the telephone company Bell Systems.

It’s quite long, but fast forward 7 minutes in and it gets more interesting as to his thought processes and the elements considered in logotype design. Overall, a good little primer on corporate identity in Mad Men styli.

Interesting that, talking about his film work, Bass once described his main goal for the title sequences as being to ‘try to reach for a simple, visual phrase that tells you what the picture is all about and evokes the essence of the story’. A brand’s logo tries to do the same thing. Nice.

Came across the vid via this cool site www.underconsideration.com/brandnew which reviews and critiques new logos.

The way to go

This video by Hirst, Crickmore and Durose tells the story of the UK system of road signs and the contribution made by two designers, Margaret Calvert and Jock Kinneir between 1957 and 1967.

As a regular cyclist, I spend a lot of time being guided and protected by road signs. But in a funny way, I don’t really notice them; it’s only when there is a new feature, such as a new mark for the congestion zone or a nice blue stripe for a new cycle lane, that my proper awareness seems to wake-up to the other things decorating my route.

The video makes the point that this happens precisely because Calvert and Kinneir’s work was so good: information design is successful when we are able to derive significant meaning from it but without being distracted by it.

A more detailed account of Calvert and Kinneir’s work can be found on the Design Museum website, here.

No,…

…this is the inspiration for the title of this blog. And not at all what you were thinking of.