Mailer wins ISTD gong

Fantastic news: I've just heard from Matt Baxter of 300million that my much-ballyhooed 'And...' mailer (which 300million, of course, designed into greatness) has won a 'Premier' award from the International Society of Typographic Designers (ISTD).

(Pic thanks to AceJet170)

Premier Awards are, according to the ISTD, 'chosen from the work that has met the criteria for a Certificate of Excellence, but which is also outstanding in the view of the majority of the jurors.' Very nice.

So I need to thank the geniuses of the 'Million once again, in this case especially Kerry White and Gareth Rutter, who did the really very fiddly typography. (Kerry was also the driving force behind the whole design.) Thanks, geniuses.

Mailer on FormFiftyFive

Chuffed to see my mailer making a renewed appearance in the blogosphere, on design blog FormFiftyFive. Some very kind comments, too. Thanks to all.

'And' mailer gets some more blog space

Great to see my mailer on two new blogs today: Noisy Decent Graphics and Draw the Line.


Picture nicked from Ben. Hope that's okay, Ben.

I've had a little slew of new requests for copies as a result. So many thanks to Ben and James.

More blogging about the mailer

Picture by David

This is really very gratifying indeed. David has posted his own piece about the mailer, with some more lovely pictures. I am thrilled.

Mailer proving a bit of a hit

My mailer seems to be going down well, I'm happy to say. Latest responses include:

"Thanks for sending me your mailer, I LOVE it. Love it soooo much. LOVE IT.
I'm gushing, but I loooove it. It's lovely."

And:
"Just a quick note to say thanks for the booklet. Very clever and very beautiful."

And:
"I've had a glorious day with my new friend, taking it out and about and indeed showing it off to friends and colleagues. So I was devastated when I opened my work bag to discover it had gone...
So with my bottom lip quivering (and fingers crossed) could I be so bold as to ask you for another one of your little booklets?"

And:
"Just got the mailer - very lovely, very jealousy-inspiring."

And:
"Just got your mailer in the post. And what a lovely piece of work it is... Brilliant idea and beautifully executed."

300million's little video is helping too.

"Hi Mike," says one emailer, "(if there are any left) I would love one of the 'And' books...for the simple reason I MUST KNOW HOW IT WORKS!"

Somebody else wrote that, "we had a good crowd of designers around the youtube clip here in the studio I wondered if I could trouble you for a real copy..."

There are more, but I think you get the idea. It's all doing my ego a power of good.

If you'd like to see what all the fuss is about, there are some left. Just ask: mike[at]reedwords.co.uk

My mailshot. At last.

It's here. It's actually here. My Christmas 2007 mailshot - all pretence at a New Year deadline long discarded - has finally arrived from the extraordinarily diligent presses of Gavin Martin, via the admirably ambitious design heads of 300million.

It's become an all-round self-promotional doohickey by now - and is all the better for it, I reckon.

My initial idea - a riposte to the dozens, if not hundreds, of people who tell me it's ungrammatical to start sentences with 'And' - has become a sort of sleight-of-hand origami masterpiece. Just watch 300million's little 'unboxing' video:



The thing just opens, and opens, and opens, and opens. (And with good reason - it reflects the rhythm of my ongoing conjunctions through the piece.) I've actually pulled one to bits and I still can't really work out how it works. But it's brilliant.

So enormous thanks to Gavin Martin, for running their presses on this for real four times to make sure they got it spot on. That's not service, that's something beyond. And (there I go again) thanks to 300million: top clients, inspired designers and some of the nicest people in the business to boot.

As you can tell, I've come over all emotional and Academy Awardish.

(There aren't that many spares, but if you'd like one, let me know: mike[at]reedwords[dot]co[dot]uk.)

First sight of my Christmas mailer

And as many of you know, that's Christmas '07, not '08. Still, it's turned out beautifully, thanks to the very generous hard work of 300million (design) and Gavin Martin (print).



Naturally, I'm not going to spoil what I hope will be a very nice surprise, which is why you're only getting this sneak peek through the packaging.

It's not really a Christmas mailer any more, of course. By force of circumstance it's become a general purpose promotional piece. And to be honest, I'm delighted about that. I haven't done any proper self-promotion for ages. So I'm cleaning up my database, as they say, and will be dispersing little grey boxes across the land (even the world) very shortly.

Big bid binders win the day

Some great news about the presentation materials I did with 300million for property developers Cathedral: we won!

This was Cathedral's bid to develop a new library, leisure centre and residential accommodation in the heart of Clapham - where I spent much of my London life before upping sticks for Surrey family life.

I wrote and edited the (pretty extensive) documents in double-fast time, and they were delivered to Lambeth Council in the very nick of time. The result: Cathedral, very much the underdogs, won the tender. And won it by a country mile, I'm told.

No doubt this was due primarily to the extraordinary scheme Cathedral proposed, including a spiral library reminiscent of Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim in New York. (To read more, click 'Projects' on the Cathedral site.)


The library interior (image pinched from Cathedral's site with the best of motives)

Even so, Cathedral believed in the value of a professional, original and consistent brand even at this tender stage - including a strong tone of voice. And they've been generous in their apportioning of credit in 300million's and my direction. Which is very nice of them.

Big bid binders

This was a slightly mad project. The good people at 300million asked me to help them put together materials for a major property development bid by Cathedral.

Cathedral wanted a presentation that showed their commitment to quality and innovation. So they hired 300million to create an inspiring identity for the project (which, true to form, they did), and asked me to write a brochure to sum up the hundreds of pages of technical information they had to submit.

It was something of a scramble: as you can imagine, deadlines for this sort of thing are fairly tight. And it was one of those jobs that keeps suggesting ideas, to the point where you realise you've made several rods for your own back.

But we made it (in the very nick of time), and it looked great. As you can see, 300million pushed the boat out when it came to binders, commissioning a vast custom-made one to hold the architectural drawings (by Studio Egret West).

Those are my lines on the covers, by the way: some more of those rods I mentioned. "We really ought to have nice headlines on these binders..." Of such passing comments are desperate late-night scribblings born.

Thanks to 300million for the pic