business card

I was going for the "crazy polymath" angle. This is the first time I've used my Kelsey table-top press. I got the plate cut at Centurion Graphics (who I found out about from Steve Brett). I know it's kind of cheating to set it digitally and then cut it to a plate but it would have cost a lot more in time and money to buy the type. I'm pretty happy with this solution and it cost me about £20 to make 100 business cards (and the next 100 will only cost £3.50 now that I have the plate). Another great thing about cutting stuff onto plates like this is that next time I need a new card design, I can try something hand-rendered!

wine sign design

I did some sign writing for the organic greengrocers next door...

stuff from my old sketchbooks #3

encyclopedia: a kind of press release

So it's finished. I'm pretty happy with it. It's more than a year's work.

I printed the inners at Hanway Print and silk-screen printed and bound the rest at home. The foil blocking on the cover was done at the Wyvern Bindery. I was looking into doing it myself but in the end the cost to set up would have been the same and I definitely wouldn't have done such a good job. I was also keen to give Wyvern Bindery some custom after all the friendly help I've had there in the past. They charge a setting fee of £25 for the first line of text and £5 for each additional line. Then it's about £5 per unit for every copy made after that. I think this is justifiable for an artist book.

Right now, I'm still figuring out how to present it. Doing readings is kind of limiting as this book kind of needs to be handled and leafed through to work as an artwork. My current plan is to hold some kind of event at Cafe Kino some time later this year.

I'm also thinking about offering a bespoke binding service for those who want their own personal copies. This makes more sense than mass producing and I don't want to charge for the content. Just the binding.

Speaking of which, I'm providing .PDF copies of this document free of charge to those who would like to read it (there will be some kind of 'this belongs to hrjireland' watermark on the pages) so if you'd like a copy, contact me somehow...

encyclopedia: book belt

A  non-letterpress version of the blurb/book belt. I will be trying to set a letterpress version in the future but I've spent enough money for one day...

encyclopedia: foil blocked

Just a peek for now. And yes, in case you've been wondering, the spelling is deliberate.

printing weekend

Spending this weekend taking a break from running around and getting on with some print stuff. These are getting close to the final stages of two big-ish projects and it takes me ages to get up the courage to make each new mark. Luckily, I've got all weekend.

encyclopedia progress

I think I might actually have finished type-setting the encyclopedia! It  has taken a good long time but I'm pleased with it now. Next is binding...

I ordered some super nice binding cloth for it a couple of weeks ago and I'm gonna have a go at foil blocking for the title. Hooray!

o & a

I went for a walk on Primrose Hill the other day. I like taking photos of buildings the peer into the parks in London. Here are a couple of photo collages, demonstrating the escape of discarded letters from abbreviated words (a project from a couple of years ago) into the ionosphere.

finishing the cover for prism 2

food-chain #1

So, food-chain no.1 is finished in time for the designers market and I'm actually pretty pleased with it. I couldn't quite get hold of the paper stock I wanted but it still looks quite nice actually. It contains essays by me and Olly Watson as well as a few extra bits and pieces.

the fruits of an afternoon's lino-cutting

These are the last of the lino-cuts I needed to make for the object and eternity. They're the sharpest I've made so far. The essay if finished and foot-noted and ready for print. Tomorrow will be a combination of digitally printing the text and manually illustrating each page with the 9 seperate carvings I've made. I'm very excited right now.

royal festival hall

While a was looking for photos in my portfolio to add to my new flickr thing, I found some really old work that I kind of still liked.

royal

festival

hall

It's a display type I made in celebration of the Royal Festival Hall. I made it by burning away a stencil of a classical typeface so that something new emerged. This was a tribute to the way in which the new, modern Southbank centre emerged from the destruction of the Southbank during the second world war. The typeface was called tonic, I believe, as in 'a tonic for the the nation'. I just thought I'd post it since I've been talking about that bit of the world a lot recently