Hasta La Ideas

Introducing the Hoxton Street Monster Supplies, residence of the newly formed Ministry of Stories and the latest site for Dave Eggers’s ongoing 826 literacy program. The branch, the UK’s first, has been fully kitted out monster-style by We Made This…

As the designers explain on their blog, in keeping with the model of the other 826 writing centres in the US (where children aged 8-18 can get one-to-one tuition with professional authors) each is housed behind a fantastical shop-front designed to fire the imagination, and – through selling merchandise – generate income for the centres.

In San Francisco’s Pirate Supply Store you can buy glass eyes and peg-legs, for example; 826NYC’s Superhero Supply Company offers custom-fit capes; while Seattle’s Greenwood Space Travel Supply Company sells – as the 826 site has it – “all your space commuting appurtenances”.

The look and feel of the first 826 site in the UK, Hoxton Street Monster Supplies: Purveyor of Quality Goods for Monsters of Every Kind, fell to We Made This after they initially talked about the idea of a UK version on their blog – having seen Eggers talk at TED in April 2008 – and noted that several others had had similar thoughts.

Interest in the idea grew and arts entrepreneurs Lucy McNab and Ben Payne were able to secure support for the project from the Arts Council, as well as seed-funding from the JJ Charitable Trust. To help things along even more, author Nick Hornby – a keen advocate of bringing 826 to the UK – lent his support to the initiative.

The Ministry of Stories and its Hoxton Street Monster Supplies alter-ego is the result. “The shop was established in 1818, and ever since then has served the daily needs of London’s extensive monster community,” explain We Made This on their blog. “Step inside, and you’ll find a whole range of essential products for monsters. You can pick from a whole range of Tinned Fears (each of which comes with a specially commissioned short story from authors including Nick Hornby and Zadie Smith), a selection of Human Preserves, and a variety of other really rather fine goods.

“The project has been an utter joy to work on, letting us flex both our design and our writing muscles in equal measure,” they add, “as well as working with a fantastic team of collaborators including architects, writers, designers, dramaturgs (look it up) and others.”

Of course, the shop also holds a secret – a disguised entrance that opens onto the Ministry of Stories. “The Ministry is designed to feel really special,” say We Made This, “the space was architected brilliantly by Andrew Lock, Catherine Grieg and David Ogunmuyiw; with fantastic wall illustrations by the very lovely Heather Sloane.”

The identity for the Ministry grew out of a series of branding workshops where hundreds of names for the project were mulled over, say WMT. “Alistair [Hall] then happened to stumble upon his grandmother’s old post-war ration book, featuring the Ministry of Food logo, and that was that. The Ministry had found its name, mood, and identity.”

You can follow more about the Ministry on the MoS website (designed by Manifest), the MoS Facebook page, and the MoS Twitter feed. More pictures of the Ministry are on Alistair’s MoS Flickr set. WMT would like to thank Benwells, Robert Horne, Fenner Paper and Colorset UVI for their help on the project.

Mark Blamire – better known as Blam, the proprietor of online poster archive and shop, Blanka – is starting up a sister venture called Print-Process. Like Blanka, Print-Process is a website from which visitors can buy posters. However, unlike Blanka, each poster on the PP site will be available as an archival quality Giclée print, in a selection of different sizes (A2, A1 and A0) and printed to order..

“With Blanka we always made prints to one size and to a strict edition,” explains Blam. “We felt that we should aim to broaden the choices for our customers, especially those excluded from owning a piece of printed work due to its price or its size.”

“As we develop and grow,” continues Blam, “we also want to involve our customers in this evolution. ‘Democratic’ is one of the key words we use, when we explain the simple philosophy on which Print-Process is founded. It will also be one of the consistent values at the heart of the company, as we push forward and explore exciting new opportunities of making graphic art and imagery in a more accessible way for our customers and our artists.”

Studio Build has designed the identity, two launch posters and the website for print-process.com (screengrab of the homepage shown above) which launches this week with over 100 posters to choose from, designed by the likes of James Joyce, Spin, Alison Haigh and Leander Herzog.

For our December issue‘s Gallery prize, Blam has very generously set aside one of each of the two Build launch posters (at A0 size, each worth £120) to give away, plus the opportunity to visit the Print-Process site and choose any other poster at any available size. Here’s a look at the two Build poster designs up for grabs:

To be in with a chance of winning the prizes, check out a copy of our lovely new December issue (see previous post)

print-process.com

Last month, we blogged about a new lenticular stamp designed by KesselsKramer for the Dutch Post Office. We’ve just heard from GBH in London that they’re also about to launch a whole Thunderbirds inspired set for the Royal Mail in the UK using similar technology. You can see the stamps here…

In October we showcased the new lenticular Dutch stamp created by KesselsKramer and director Anton Corbijn. Using similar processes over a series of stamps, London-based GBH’s Special Stamps Issue: FAB – The Genius of Gerry Anderson set has been created for the UK’s Royal Mail to honour the work of Supermarionation legend Gerry Anderson MBE and his team at Century 21 Productions.

GBH’s lenticular stamps feature the countdown and launch sequence of all the legendary Thunderbirds craft from the iconic 1960s series’ title sequence. And as part of the special edition pack, who better than Brains himself to take fans through how the “m… m… MotionStamp” itself was made:

“The stamps were created by GBH with a process that fused film-making, editing and post production techniques with graphic design,” say GBH.

“Sequences were meticulously trialled from the original master 35mm print at ITV, and the final frames were carefully selected, exported to HD quality, digitally re-mastered and then re-edited back into an all-new 36 frames sequence, for use in the complex micro-lenticular process.”

The lenticular stamps are joined by a Royal Mail Special Stamp Issue of six landscape stamps featuring all of Gerry Anderson’s Supermarionation TV shows from the 1960s: Supercar, Fireball XL5, Stingray, Captain Scarlet and Joe 90:

“The stamp format allows the full 35mm frame to be shown exactly as it was shot by Gerry Anderson for the first time, as it was cropped to 4:3 when originally aired on British TV,” say GBH, who have been clearly been meticulous about the detailing here.

Indeed, the presentation pack for the stamps features an interview with original puppet sculptor, Terry Curtis, by Supermarionation expert Chris Bentley (Captain Scarlet deconstructed, below) and a special pull-out four-page comic telling the story of the creation of the Thunderbirds through the illustrations of original TV21 comic artist, Gerry Embleton, with text by Stephen La Rivieire.

The stamps, micro-lenticular mini-sheet and all collectible products will be available from January 11 2011.

I always feel jealous when I pick up a copy of New York magazine, jealous that my own home city, London, doesn’t have such an intelligent, funny and well-designed equivalent title to document its life and times.

There are lots of things that New York does well, but the thing it does best is its infographics. After Information is Beautiful’s David McCandless had his infamous set-to with Neville Brody on Newsnight, the role of infographics has been increasingly questioned: many are beautiful but are they also meaningless? The infographics in New York are sometimes the former, but never the latter.

What sets New York‘s infographics apart (created by the design department under design director Chris Dixon) is that they combine journalistic rigour with design excellence in almost equal measure. A particular favourite is regular feature The Neighbourhood News. A map of New York is annotated with short news stories from different boroughs across the city, neatly encapsulating its diverse nature: an Upper West Side lady reports the theft of $1 million worth of jewellery from her apartment while, in outlying Soundview, police remove a three-foot-long snake from a man’s bathroom.

Elsewhere, infographics are used to illustrate and explain features and news stories, adding rather than merely decorating. Sometimes a whole spread will be devoted to data, such as Who Got In (above from the 4/10/10 issue), a recent piece on the Manhattan social scene that simply listed the guests at all the biggest parties in one week. And they are frequently funny, especially The Approval Matrix “our deliberately oversimplified guide to who falls where on our taste hierarchies”.

For this December’s Monograph we have reproduced a selection of New York infographics highlights, analysing everything from the ethnic make-up of New York to readers’ views on socks.

Subscribers will get their copy with the issue, out next week. If you would like to get Monograph, we are currently offering 30% off subscriptions but you’ll have to be quick. The offer ends at the end of today. You can subscribe here

It’s not everyday we see something designed by a city council and think ‘ooh, that’s nice’ – but this is one of those days. Manchester City Council’s in-house design team, m-four, sent us this just-under-A4 booklet which reviews Manchester’s Valuing Older People (VOP) Board.

Valuing Older People is an organisation that was set up six years ago to give Manchester’s older residents a voice. This  Sidelines To Centre Stage report has been created to celebrate the work of the VOP network since its inception.

“Considering the subject matter, it seemed only natural to make people the focus of this document,” says Chris Jennings, the designer on the project. “Rather than produce a traditionally dry corporate report, we felt it was essential to bring the facts to life in a story that really did justice to the valuable work of this organisation,” he continues. “Above all, we were keen to move away from typical ‘annual report’ style design involving clichéd images, blocks of colour and ugly typography.”

“We were able to convince the client to abandon their photography in favour of striking portraits [by Mike Pilkington] of actual VOP board members,” adds Jennings on m-four’s approach to the design of the report. “The client also readily bought into our idea of a design based on a traditional book of poetry that was both clean and elegant.”

m-four.com