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Process Is Form — Book
Team’s recent book – printed in 2010 and designed by Design Project – has been produced to encourage readers to analyse and consider more closely the relationship between the process and mechanics of print production and the practice of design and communication. The book is illustrated throughout with combinations of special colours and print techniques, along with photographs of industrial objects liberated from their everyday habitat.
Practical and informative, but beautifully designed and printed, the book provides an excellent platform to show off Team’s printing capabilities and also demonstrates their keenness to get ‘stuck in’ to help designers realise their printed projects, no matter how complicated they may be. The extensive use of special colours (24 colours, plus different foils and finishes throughout) really gives a taste of the comprehensive print and finishing services Team can offer.
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The Process of Printing — Book
Team’s first book (printed in 2004 and designed by Design Project), took a designer’s-eye view of the mechanics of print production. It is now out of print and highly collectible. In this book we outlined our philosophy and method and demonstrated examples of print through a series of 24 illustrated plates showing varied techniques. These plates offered a guide to the potential of print, and demonstrated how a creative approach can enhance printed
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The Lancasters Property — Brochure
Team were very accommodating in helping MadeThought to produce this brochure for a luxury property development, The Lancasters. It features a heavyweight 6pp outer of 540gsm Colorplan Ebony duplexed onto 350gsm Colorplan White. And just to make the cover even heavier Team hand-glued 270gm Colorplan Bright White onto the front of each cover page. All mod cons, including intricate black and silver foils and interior furnished with a soft covering of 250gsm Naturalis Absolute Smooth White and 170gsm Ability Offset.
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Golden Moments — Book
Leeds based agency, Golden, chose Team to print Golden Moments, a book that uses a series of diverse images which capture and record their successful first year in business.
Golden wanted a printer with a focus on attention to detail that matched their own and they were delighted with the result. The cover of the perfect bound book features a delicately detailed foil. The fine text and tiny reversed logo on the slip cover is printed in opaque gold on 120gsm Colorit Black. The text and cover pages are printed on Tauro.
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The Angel Building — Brochure
Designed by Madethought, this brochure features an intricate gate-fold binding device, smartly designed to open up to a lovely view of an internally housed 8 page inner. Grand, spacious and beautifully layed out, this a highly desirable piece that needs to be seen in person. Printed on 130gsm and 250gsm Arctic Volume White.
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‘Soup’ by Paula Scher, for the Team Ten project, in collaboration with Domenic Lippa.
For this first article as part of Team’s tenth anniversary project, Domenic Lippa makes a compelling parallel with the pleasures, unpredictability and spontaneity of cooking and choosing and applying print processes. Paula Scher then took all the ingredients of Domenic’s article into her studio… et voila, one beautifully prepared serving of delicious poster to savour… Strictly limited to 100 A2 posters, beautifully printed by Team and individually numbered.
Article by Domenic Lippa
I love to cook. My kids would probably say I love to eat too going by the comments they make about me! But I love the idea of either following a recipe or just experimenting by bringing things that are sitting in the fridge together. I don’t care whether it’s an elaborate meal or a simple salad of fresh ingredients. It de-stresses me and weirdly I love the unpredictability of it. You can repeat a recipe and each time it might come out slightly differently. I always cook to taste rather than follow dogmatically the words from a cook book. This is something I learnt from my mother. Cooking is a communal activity to be shared with family and friends. I grew up in a family where the kitchen and meal was central to our lives. It didn’t matter what we were doing we would always eat together. My father was an Italian American (who ironically couldn’t cook) and my mother was from Grimsby (she did all the cooking). But it was my mother’s patience and enjoyment of cooking that inspired me. I remember on Sunday mornings she would be up preparing the pasta for later in the day. The sauce would cook for hours, slowly building in taste as she kept going back to it, tasting and adding flavours. We would eat a variety of foods and were also taken out to restaurants to try new tastes. The meal, whether a lunch or a dinner was a time when we would all help, sit down and argue, discuss, laugh and shout. Our meals were never conducted in silence. They were all about expression. We would then all help clear up and the routine would start again the next day.
For me cooking is all about how different ingredients can come together, to not only give sustenance but also pleasure. I love the fact that people around the world can have the same basic ingredients but yet still produce endless interpretations.
I find it interesting that although the obvious parallels between cooking and printing are there, printing is often seen as a process rather then a creative exercise. For me a process can be soulless and clinical. Print should not be about this. Print should be interpretive and expressive. As with cooking I love the apparent restrictiveness of print – a certain number of colours and materials coming together to produce something that will be interpreted by someone else. But print has the same limitless possibilities as cooking. How many colours are you using, specials, 4 colour process? Is it litho, silkscreen, gravure, etched or digital? How are the inks to be laid down, what materials and paper stocks are you using? How is the piece being bound or structured? What other materials are you using? For me some of my most successful projects have been using just one or two colours. Nothing more. Simple. Others have complex solutions that use a variety of techniques and they work too. But in the end the difference that makes a project work or fail is the attention to detail and an understanding of what you’re working with.
Every time I start a project I’m already thinking about the end result. How can I make something a little bit special? Print is central to this. It’s the same with cooking. Will it work or will I screw up! And I love that
I have a great appreciation for printers and their craft and after giving Push the ‘SI treatment’ last year it was only a matter of time before Team Impression would be given the same platform to showcase what they love and do best and the timing couldn’t be any better – 2011 marks Team’s 10th anniversary and to commemorate the occasion they have embarked on an exciting year long project called ‘Ten’.
Ten experts (and their expert collaborators) who, for the next ten months will provide an essay and an image to explore this the true impact and meaning of the print processes, the designer’s relationship with print processes and the vital elements of teamwork and collaboration. Quite simply, an artist will take an article written by their “teammate” and come up with a visual to represent it. A strictly limited edition of 100 A2 posters of each of the ten collaborators artwork, beautifully printed by Team and individually numbered, will be available soon via the website.
A big thank you once again to Steve @ Team Impression and James @ Design Project for the high-res imagery.
PS. You know I had to squeeze some new MadeThought work into the feature ;)
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This post is tagged Books, Brochures, Catalogues, Design Project, Print, Process Is Form, Team Impression, The Process of Printing
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