Image... Self-initiated Brief... Beautiful Books

The House of Ellwand - Fairie-ality

As for my project I am creating a book about the secret garden, I have looked at some more books, as well as having looked at book design for the book works brief. Here is a beautiful example of a book, with different print finishes and the use of different stocks, to make each page different and exciting and to give this book a luxurious finish. I may consider some of these processes when printing my book.

Foil blocking on title on wrap around cover / De-bossing on book cover

Tracing paper envelope / Photograph showing variety of stock weights, textures & colours

Tracing paper with text over image

Different size paper / fold out sections

Tracing paper image over other image

Flip pages / Thick, rough stock

This beautiful book contains many different stocks, print finishes and folds. 

YCN... Mailshot Inspiration

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By-Invite-Only

Chloe found these examples of tickets, invites and a mini magazine/leaflet with a vintage theme. By Invite Only is a handcrafted jewellery brand with a rustic art direction, with an old circus theme. This is what has inspired Chloe's thoughts for the mail shot. They are well designed pieces which get the theme across well. We especially like the stock used for the leaflet, and think this would work well with our photographs of the Pearl Lowe range. We also like the foiling on the front, as it gives it a luxurious finish. We would like to create a similar high quality effect with either foil blocking or laser cutting. 

Here are the invites I found:

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Jaeger

I have found this invitation to the Jaeger London Spring/Summer 2010 London Fashion Week show on behance. I like the simplicity of the invite, with only the most important information showing. The invite is given a luxurious finish with the gold foil. We are thinking about adding some sort of finish to our invites.

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h&m

These H&M invites again are simplistic, with a luxurious quality foil finish on the text. I really like the stock they are printed on to, if we could do so something like this it would suit our eco theme. The simplistic stock with the fancy foiling is the same kind of message we want to give about Peacocks - luxurious clothing but with an environmentally friendly background. 

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laser cut invite

Another laser cut invitation, where the contrasting colour is shown through the gaps. We could use a contrasting colour inside our invitation to really make it stand out. I like that its quite different just the text being laser cut compared to laser cutting an image or pattern. This would be good to try in our invites.

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Image... Self-initiated Brief... Paper craft artists

These are paper craft artists I have looked at for inspiration.

// http://www.kateslaterillustration.com

Found out this artist through this secret garden piece that I found listed on Etsy, which I really liked, so decided to find out more about her.

Kate works both in flat collage and also a combination of collage and paper-cuts which she uses to create suspended, relief illustrations. These constructions are then photographed to produce the final image.

Quite a lot of the images contain garden scenes or plants or birds, so are all very relevant to things I will be creating for my secret garden imagery. The creation of texture through the different papers used on these birds makes them stand out from the work of artists.

Kate's pieces are well crafted and lovely to look at. Her work has influenced my design ideas.

I like the idea of putting in a shape for the text so that the image fully interacts with the story. I feel really inspired by Kate's detailed paper craft pieces, and they make me want to get starting on creating my own. I'll look at other paper craft artist before I start doing this, to see other ways of creating 3d imagery. Kate's images have photographed really well, meaning that 2d has been able to turn to 3d and back to 2d again in a successful way.

YCN... Eco Friendly Designs

As we have thought about making our designs eco friendly, I have done a bit of research into some of the existing eco friendly graphic design thats out there.

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Think Green

A range of printed materials, including stickers, posters and postcards were also produced to reinforce the campaign messages and, in line with the environmental nature of the campaign, all the items were produced using the most environmentally friendly techniques and materials such as vegetable inks.

I like how simplistic these designs are, with text only, and it being the message and the concept that is the most important part of the design.

We could take the brown paper bag idea, and propose that Peacocks print onto paper bags instead of plastic ones, or we could create canvas bags.

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lovelyasatree

How to be an environmentally friendly graphic designer:

Obviously this is only a mock up, and the only resources we can really use are the college printers, but if we were really proposing this campaign we should use recycled paper and find a greener printer.

Case Studies:

Thomas Matthews

Ten ways design can help fight climate change - A6 brochure from waste make-ready sheets, french-folded and printed on the plain side.

I like this idea of up cycling, its something I've seen about before. It might be more suitable for screen printing, but I think it could look really good and it is obviously helping the environment. I don't know if it would match the style of our designs, but it is something worth considering.

Hudson Powell

Brochures, menus and business cards for restaurant, Canteen, in London. Although designed more with aesthetics in mind than the environment, all items are printed on off-white recycled paper using a minimum of ink for a beautiful and sophisticated effect that keeps the environmental impact to a minimum.

I really like these simplistic designs that don't waste any ink, I think they look sophisticated and on trend, something we do want to represent about Peacocks, so this could be an idea for the mailshot or some other piece of design.

Composite Projects

- The compact size of the booklets makes optimum use of the printing sheet. The guides have three sections defined by alternating coloured (100% recycled Sugar Paper) and white paper.


These design on recycled paper look really good, and I like how the colour works with the paper. They look more interesting than a standard print, and I think printing on to recycled paper could be what makes Peacocks stand out against other fashion stores.

- Report on green consumer behaviour

- No excess packaging, self-packaged, the cover wrapping around the contents to become the envelope.

- Recycled paper

- Colour-set is manufactured from 100% recycled pre-consumer fibres.

This is another good idea to self-package the product, it could be something Chloe considers when designing the mail shot. The envelope could open up to be the invite. This would save bits from being lost, and keep everything together, while saving paper.

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Upcycling

My friend bought this interesting towel from Liberty in London, where an old tea towel has been brought to life with a new design screen printed on top. 

Tickets - From D&AD New Blood exhibitor [harrysmithdesign.co.uk] So many train tickets must be wasted everyday as they have no use once the journey is over, but this is a great idea, to screen print over the ticket to turn it into a new ticket. This idea stood out after the exhibition from all the others as it looks good, but is good for the environment too.

- Some more examples of up cycling to consider

These very modern type focused designs are to promote a traditional village green festival. The problem is that an event needs advertising but the organisers and designers wanted the promotion to be environmentally friendly in fitting with the event. To solve this problem, the designers used 100% recycled materials, including the t-shirts, which are old T's with the new logo printed over them. The typical audience may be older people, but the new modern design of bold typography and simple imagery representing bunting will also draw in younger crowds as they are 'cool' designs. The audience will interact with the pieces by using them, visiting the event and then re-cycling the designs.

- This is another example of how good printing on to recycled paper can actually look when combined with the right colour choices. I like the paper bag examples, this is something I want to try out.

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Following this research, I have thought about how we can bring the environment in to our designs. [see blog post]

YCN... Fashion Branding & Advertising

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Chloe has found these examples of branding, showing how different objects can be created where all the designs work together as a set. These examples contain: mailing label, vertical business card, promo stickers, sticker tags, and handing tags. By sticking with the same font, colour scheme, and focus with the shape of the circle, it is obvious that all of these items are part of a set. As Peacock's methods of advertising at the moment are a bit all over the place, as I found out when I researched into them, [examples here], one of the main things we said we wanted to achieve was to make all of their branding link in together.

These examples are for a clothes store, and I really like the 'g', as its quite clever how it is made up from a coat hanger. I like the designs, but think they are quite simplistic, and I'm not completely sure who the target audience is, apart from it being females.

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I found these sophisticated adverts by Neville Brody and would like to try creating some advertisements in a similar style featuring Peacocks clothing and photographs from the Pearl Lowe range. I think these adverts could be quite timeless, and would appeal to both the younger generation and the older generation shopping at Peacocks. They are a good mix of type with the image, and I think this could work well to try this.

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To potentially go for a different approach, I've researched high fashion adverts, scanning these in from magazines. While these may be suited for a different target audience, the sophisticated style of these adverts may be something we try and get across with out Peacocks adverts.