We've just picked up a batch of posters we designed for Twickenham Carnival, which is organised by the London Borough of Richmond Upon Thames. The posters have been printed up from original woodblock and metal letterpress type by the good folks at New North Press, and we're dead chuffed with them.
Richmond Council asked us to put together the posters for the carnival based on the theme 'Heritage Now!' So by way of research we took a trip to the Local Studies Collection at Richmond Library, which is a real treasure trove. We unearthed some giant scrapbooks which had a whole series of fantastic original posters from local carnivals back in the 1920s, which was too good a gift to ignore.
We discussed the idea of doing purely typographic posters with the client, who could see that it fit snugly with their heritage theme. We then put together a rough layout, and took it to New North Press, who matched the type where possible, and proposed some great substitutions where not.
They printed an all-black version for us to scan (so that we could create artwork for a large run of digitally printed posters), and then created a short run of original two-colour prints.
See the full set of shots of the reference imagery and the printing process on Alistair's Flickr set.
The carnival is at Orleans House Gallery, on Sunday 13 June.