6th Annual Friends of St Bride Conference

At the end of last week Alistair escaped the studio for a couple of days to go and hang out with some of the great and the good from British design.

St Bride, the fantastic printing & graphic design library, organises an annual design fest, and this year the theme was "Great British Design?"

There was an incredible line up of speakers – there's not room here to mention them all, so we'll go with a few highlights. You can check out the full line up here.

Things kicked off at a cracking pace with Ken Garland talking about five designers who he considers to be unsung heroes of British Design. He very generously handed round some of Ken Campbell's stunning limited edition books, including Father's Hook, a sumptuous letterpressed piece.

He also enthused about Alfred Wainwright's A pictorial guide to the Lakeland Fells, a series of amazing guides to the Lake District, all hand lettered, even the columns of justified text.

Garland was followed by Amelia Noble and Frith Kerr of Kerr Noble, and then Morag Myerscough of Studio Myerscough , who all showed delicious examples of their recent work. (We particularly liked Morag's title for her talk: "After victory, tighten your hemlet cord".)

Later that afternoon Tim Fendley of Applied Information Group talked with real energy about a couple of large city projects: Bristol’s groundbreaking wayfinding and city identity project, Bristol Legible City; and Legible London, which is still in its early stages.

As if all that weren't enough, there was also a selection of practical demonstrations that you could participate in. Calligrapher Paul Antonio was doing amazing things with inks, quills and home-made nibs; while out in the courtyard John Neilson and Emma Lavender were giving classes on lettercarving in stone. Upstairs in the letterpress room, Richard Lawrence was putting together a letterpress poster to commemorate the event, featuring a linoprint collectively created by participants at the conference. He was also showing some of the stunning Stanley Donwood prints he'd editioned, which had been designed for Thom Yorke's solo album The Eraser.

Check out Alistair's full set of pictures from the event here.

All in all it was a fantastic couple of days. Book yourself in for next year, and in the meantime, become a Friend of St Bride.