Getting Down to Business (Cards)

We printed our business cards just in the nick of time for Crafty Fox last month. It all ended up rather last minute because of the number of incarnations the cards had to go through before we reached a final design we were happy with. I thought I'd share some of our process with you...

Some of our initial designs were really rather vile. In fact, I'm not even going to show you. I think our evil twins were in on those days.

The main element was our big G logo. We tried it blind debossed:

Printed in opaque white ink:

Dark grey:

 The winner in the end was this palest of pale greys:

For the 2nd colour, of course, we went with a lovely zingy orange, to match our branding:

We actually printed the orange first:

We originally thought, we'd print two-sided with one colour on each side, but the G logo all on it's own was too subtle even for us!

And here's the finished product:

Type and Transport

You know the Tube font? It's cool isn't it? And the branding across London Transport: brilliant, smart, consistent, right? Alright fine, I bet you've never really thought about it. Take a second now though, and I think you'll agree.

It's coming up 100 years since calligrapher Edward Johnston designed that iconic typeface; so much a part of Londoner's lives that it's almost invisible. To celebrate, the London Transport Museum have put on a fabulous tour at the depot in Acton, entitled Johnston Journeys, and I can certainly recommend it. Apologies for the quality of my photos.

The depot itself is a wonder to behold. Apparently the museum at Covent Garden only represents 10% of the archive of stuff held by London Transport, and all the rest is squirrelled away in this vast depot. It's a complete Aladdin's cave of transport history, really quite extraordinary.

The tour itself was excellent fun. Very well curated, cherry-picking artefacts from all over the depot that related to Johnston and his typeface, in its various incarnations over the last century.

The absolute highlight for us (of course!) was the type case filled with wood type. They even had some formes still locked up with various bits of signage, it was a delight to see.

Sadly it was shut away in a glass case, so we couldn't really get anywhere near it... understandable though, even I could imagine getting a bit light-fingered faced with such a treasure.

The only slight downside for us was that the chaps who gave our tour, whist incredibly knowledgeable on trains, tubes, and the history of the Underground, perhaps weren't quite so expertly informed when it came to the history (and terminology) of type and printing.

For us personally, that being our main area of interest, I suppose it would have been nice to have a bit more detail on that side of things. I know I sound like a total Hermione when I say things like that, but of course I mean no disservice to the volunteers there; they're doing a grand job.

Overall, it was a fascinating couple of hours. We could have happily stayed to explore for the rest of the day. So if you've any interest in the history of type, design, branding, transport or indeed, just the history of our fair city... do check it out.

Read All About It

It's letterpress, but not as we know it.

We came across a fascinating video this week, showing the process of printing newspapers "pre-computers".

The film was made in around 1950 and it's a great snapshot of printing history. You can see linotype and teletype machines in action, proofing, plate-making, photographs being developed and some bone fide 1950s scouts. It has everything. It certainly filled a few gaps in my knowledge. Hope you enjoy this as much as we did...