Unit Editions

Pentagram: Living by Design

26 October 2022 in Books Comment

The Biography
The Directory
Two volumes in slipcase
Design Director: Tony Brook
Design: SPIN
Writer: Adrian Shaughnessy
Text editor: Mark Sinclair

Five years in the making, Pentagram: Living by Design (two volumes) is the definitive statement on 50 years of Pentagram. It is an in-depth survey of the group from its beginnings in 1970s London to its current status as one of the powerhouses of international design.

Published in two densely illustrated volumes and spread over 1400 pages, it is a limited-edition of 1000 copies.

Book one, The Biography, offers a comprehensive analysis of the group, its partners, its achievements, its multidisciplinary approach, and its unique business model. This is accompanied by a plethora of images (some never published), a visual essay of Pentagram’s work across four main sectors, a selection of partners writings, a Pentagram family tree, and much more.

Book two, The Directory, has profiles of 50 partners, past and present, accompanied by extensive coverage of their work. It’s a stellar roll call: from the five famous founders to some of the most celebrated names in contemporary design. It also includes a list of everyone who worked in the firm’s various offices.

Both books are designed by Tony Brook and the Spin design team and use a range of paper stocks and special colours.

The books

Pentagram:
Living by Design.
The Biography.
656pp.

Content: 
Living by Design – A Pentagram Biography: an extensive essay by Adrian Shaughnessy chronicling the group’s progress over half a century, examining in detail its unique partner-owned organisational structure and its contribution to the culture of design. This living biography brings the Pentagram story right up to the present day. 

The Sectors: a visual essay cataloguing the group’s vast array of creative activities arranged under the umbrella headings Branding, Editorial Design, Design for Culture, and Three-dimensional Design.

Pentagram Partners – In Their Own Words: selection of partners’ writings from over half a century, including texts by Alan Fletcher, John McConnell, Paula Scher and Michael Bierut, plus interviews with Marina Willer, Angus Hyland and Eddie Opara.
 
A Pentagram Miscellany: visual journey through the group’s vast repository of rare archive material. From invitations to parties, original artwork and candid photographs, to the situating of an Antony Gormley sculpture on the roof of Pentagram’s New York office, this material forms an alternative history of the group and offers a deep dive through design history over the past 50 years.

A Pentagram Partners Family Tree: Paula Scher maps out the evolution of Pentagram from a single London office in 1972 to a group of 23 partners across offices in London, New York, Berlin and Austin, Texas. 

Pentagram:
Living by Design  
The Directory
736pp.

Content: 
The Partners: profiles of all 50 partners, past (27) and present (23), accompanied by extensive coverage of their work. From the five famous founders to some of the most celebrated names in contemporary design; from star designers who didn’t stay the course to the current generation of young creative practitioners versed in the new arts of multidisciplinary communication. The Directory demonstrates how Pentagram’s partners are collectively responsible for an unrivalled catalogue of work in all the major creative disciplines.

The People: From Pentagram’s formation to the present day, a list of everyone who worked in the firm’s various offices – including designers, administrators, technicians and others in various supporting roles. 

Specifications:

Title: Pentagram:
Living by Design.
The Biography.
White cloth bound hard cover.
Two ribbon marker. 
Book jacket in Tatami White 150gr with three-coloured screen (three variations) and non-scratch lamination. 
Printed four colour + one Pantone (with an additional eight-page section and another Pantone). 
Papers: Arena Extra White Smooth 120gr; Arena Natural Smooth 90gr; Sirio Black (end papers).
Printer: Verona Libri.
Pages: 656.

Title: Pentagram:
Living by Design.
The Directory.
Limp cover in myCordenons myReef Grey 330gr with foil stamping.
Flush cut and OTA bound.
Printed four colour + one Pantone (with an additional eight-page section and another Pantone). 
Papers: Arena Extra White Smooth 90gr and Arena Natural Smooth 90gr. 
Printer: Verona Libri.
Pages: 736.

Slipcase: Assuan 5080 cloth covered with foil stamping.
Size: 275mm x 215mm x 100mm.
ISBN: 978-1-9164573-8-6.

The definitive edition. Limited to 1,000 copies.

Unit Editions

Ed Fella: A Life in Images

1 March 2022 in Books Comment

Ed Fella: A Life in Images

Title: Ed Fella: A Life in Images [Unit 46]
Editor: David Cabianca
Introduction: Katherine McCoy
Visual Essay: Ed Fella with Andrea Fella
Essays: Lorraine Wild, Rick Poynor, David Cabianca

Starting out in the commercial design studios of 1950s Detroit, Ed Fella (b. 1938) spent 30 years practising professionally as a graphic designer and illustrator with client-based work for the auto industry, healthcare, and retail sectors.

At the same time, he states, he was building “an alternative practice of experimental design and typography work, done pro bono for arts organisations, while pursuing personal investigations into art and photography”.

Now, thanks to the generosity of over 600 Kickstarter backers, there is a book that charts Fella’s epic creative journey. Ed Fella: A Life in Images includes a wide selection from his 60 years of work across, effectively, his two careers.

The book

A 316pp visual essay forms the centrepiece of the book. Designed by Fella in his own inimitable style, this is a visual history of a remarkable life in images, as told by the man himself.

This section contains a wide range of Fella’s artworks, sketchbook pages and collages; examples from various illustration and print ad commissions; Polaroids and photographs; alongside many of his instantly-recognisable type-based flyers.

The book also features an introduction by Katherine McCoy; essays by Lorraine Wild, Rick Poynor and David Cabianca — focusing on Fella’s long career, his extensive sketchbook work and his flyers, respectively — and an Afterword by his daughter, Andrea Fella.

About Ed Fella

In 1987, Fella left professional practice to go to graduate school and spent the next 30 years as an educator (now faculty emeritus) at CalArts where he negotiated the postmodern design eruptions of the 1980s and 90s, before arriving at a position of eminence within the world of art and design.

It was as he embarked in his career as a teacher that Fella redefined himself as an ‘exit-level’ designer and created an independent body of work which simultaneously sits outside, but is also allied with, what he regards as a professional ‘commercial art’ vernacular.

Much of this work — such as his largely type-based double-sided flyers — emulates the key markers of graphic design, but is created without the constraints of project definitions, even clients, budgets or schedules.

“I’m not an amateur or an outsider artist, I’m an outlier,” he states of his position. “But there was a lot of study, reading and thinking that went into the things [I made], but not necessarily consciously while I was doing them.”

In deconstructing his initial career, Fella says that he has been able to reinvent it as an art practice: “Reviewing the work in the first half of my career, there is a foreshadowing of the later speculative work; and the later work is, in turn, shadowed by my initial professional work.”

The relationship between these two phases, as he suggests, remains the essence of his long career as a graphic designer, illustrator, educator, and artist — all of which is celebrated in this book.

Specifications

Title: Ed Fella: A Life in Images
Size: 205mm x 260mm
Pages: 388
Printer: Verona Libri
Papers: Fedrigoni Arena White Smooth (text pages) and Arena Extra White Rough (cover)

Unit Editions

OOHAAHTDR™

27 March 2020 in Books Comment

OOHAAHTDR™
Ian Anderson
Design by TDR™

Produced for the AZTDR™ Kickstarter (250 copies now available)

OOHAAHTDR™ (‘What we’re doing when we’re not doing what you think we’re doing’) is a companion edition to AZTDR™ and contains new, reworked and previously unseen TDR™ artwork, alongside several texts by Ian Anderson and essays by Rick Poynor and David Thompson.

Originally produced for backers of the AZTDR™ Kickstarter campaign as an additional volume of TDR™ rarities and visual explorations, a limited number of copies of OOHAAHTDR™ are now available to buy.

Designed by TDR™ and authored by Anderson, the book also includes over 50 pages of posts culled from the archives of the long-defunct neo.DR newsgroup (Jan 1997—Feb 2001).

As Anderson writes in the User’s Guide to OOHAAHTDR™: “If this is a book, then it’s an exercise book pulled together in exactly one week, by three people, as an exercise, in the spirit of what Terry (i-D) Jones calls ‘Instant Design’; built as a response to Unit Editions’ AZTDR™, from the fallout that (definitely a) book’s un-archiving/collating process, from the physical, photocopied, lost and found, and the unmade to the lo-res, half-remembered fragments floating in our ether, bouncing back off other people.”

Size: 210 x 280mm
Pages: 196
Format: Softback
Design: TDR™
Printing: Black only with a four-colour cover
Binding: Perfect bound
Typeface: Decima Mono
Printer: Verona Libri
ISBN: 978-1-9164573-5-5

Unit Editions

A-Z of The Designers Republic™

22 September 2019 in Design Comment

A—Z of The Designers Republic™ — AZTDR™

Author: Ian Anderson
Editor: Mark Sinclair
Design: Spin

Limited Edition of 2500

Led by founder and born rebel, Ian Anderson, The Designers Republic™ has shaped graphic communication over the past 30 years through rule-defying music work, provocative self-initiated projects and a fierce commitment to conceptual thinking over style. Now, for the first time in book form, Anderson explores the studio’s output, and its influence on a generation of graphic designers.

AZTDR™ spans over three decades of work – from the studio’s earliest designs for the FON label in the mid-1980s and sleeves for Age of Chance, Chakk and Cabaret Voltaire, right up to its recent projects for The Cinematic Orchestra, Led Bib and the Gulbenkian Foundation. Alongside classic self-initiated TDR™ projects, the 512-page book features an A to Z of everything from campaigns for Evolution Print, Coca-Cola and Nike, through to the studio’s celebrated designs for video games such as Wipeout and Formula Fusion.

TDR™’s special relationship with print is explored through its celebrated contributions to IDEA and Emigre magazines and its 3D>2D book, alongside its work for Manchester School of Art, Gatecrasher, NY Sushi and the studio’s array of music clients. Here, TDR™’s work with Autechre is examined via ten key releases – covering some 34 pages – while the studio’s involvement with Pop Will Eat Itself focuses on some 28 different singles and albums.

There are also expansive sections devoted to TDR™’s designs for Aphex Twin, Moloko, Sun Electric and The Orb, alongside sleeve designs for R&S Records, New Atlantis, a range of Berlin-based labels and, of course, Warp Records.

AZTDR™ includes 250 different album and single covers; 140 prints, posters and flyers; over 130 images of TDR™ print-based and editorial projects; 23 DR Angryman variants; five Coke bottles; four badges; one Swatch watch; a T-shirt, a mug and much, much more.

In Anderson’s words: “September 2019 — 33.3 years after The Designers Republic was declared in SoYo (North of Nowhere), 25 years after a TDR™ book was first discussed and ten years after the fall and rise of The Designers Republic Phase One. As good a time as any for Unit Editions’ AZTDR™. It’s not everything but it’s everything you need to know (for now). You could call it Volume One if it helps. It’s not a monograph, it’s our idea of what ideas look like — a mix(ed) up of what you want to see, and what we want you to see, refereed by Tony, Adrian and Mark at Unit. Hopefully it’s a book about why we do what we do featuring the usual suspects and a few suspect devices. Critics might call it an overview — we call it a mission statement.”

The book also features an extensive and candid in-conversation between Anderson and Unit Editions’ Mark Sinclair. Here, TDR’s founder discusses his pre-design background in the music industry, the genesis of the TDR™ studio and its meteoric rise – encompassing its approach, provocations and relationships with clients – through to its collapse in 2009 and subsequent rebirth.

AZTDR™ is the book they said would never happen. But thanks to 1324 Kickstarter backers, it’s here at last.

Size: 280 x 240mm
Pages: 512 pages
Format: Hardback
Printing: Fluorescent yellow cover with foiled type, three special colour wrap, CMYK + one special colour throughout
Binding: Otabound
Typeface: Suisse Int’l
Printer: Verona Libri

Unit Editions

What is Universal Everything?

6 July 2019 in Books Comment

What is Universal Everything?
Editors: Adrian Shaughnessy, Tony Brook
Essays: Adrian Shaughnessy, Antonia Lee
Design: Spin

Limited Edition of 2000 – unique ‘tipped-in’ image on each cover

Matt Pyke, founder and creative director of Universal Everything, calls his studio a “digital art and design collective”. And after 15 years of revolutionary work in the digital realm, UE has its first book – What is Universal Everything?

Working closely with Pyke, the Spin design team of Tony Brook and Claudia Klat have designed a book that successfully brings Universal Everything’s vivid on-screen work to the printed page. The book is printed using a unique salmon pink fluoro colour that has been specially created and mixed for the project.

What is Universal Everything? examines 24 of the studio’s most exciting projects, from work for clients such as Microsoft, Hyundai and MTV, through to projects for Radiohead and the Science Museum in London. For each piece of work, Pyke collaborates with a pool of international creative talent from his base in Sheffield in the north of England.

The book also focuses on several of UE’s self-initiated projects that keep the studio pushing forward. These speculative explorations, says Pyke, are concerned with “trying to invent the future before we get there”.

The book also includes two essays and extensive interviews throughout, 90 pages of Pyke’s hand-drawn sketches, as well as detailed listings of the studio’s numerous sources of inspiration – from music to literature; from places to food.

In keeping with the book’s high production values, nearly all the work featured in the book has been re-rendered at high res, allowing the full majesty of Universal Everything’s screen-based work to be captured on the printed page.

Furthermore, every cover of What is Universal Everything? is unique: a different tipped-in image graces the cover of each edition. As Pyke notes: “We developed software to generate random combinations of shapes, colours and sizes with collision detection. Thousands of unique graphic compositions have been generated…. Everyone will own a one-off.”

About UE

“The company creates gorgeous visual spectacles on screen that, while they will never be attained in physical reality, reinterpret the nuances of natural human motion and seem to have a soul, a heartbeat, and the breath of life.”
The Creators Project, Vice

“Universal Everything proves how effective a flexible, collaboration-based agency model can be to deliver awe-inspiring projects on a global scale.”
Creative Bloq

“The studio’s desire to uncover new forms and aesthetic ideas produces profound experiences; often blurring the line between the art world and the commercial world of brands… as digital artists, their output is ahead of the rest.”
Highsnobiety

“Artists love to portray technology as the villain, as a force for evil that makes short work of our humanity… Matt Pyke isn’t one of them. The artist – who, it should be noted, works out of a log cabin in Sheffield, England – is an unabashed techno-optimist.”
Fast Company

Size: 240mm × 338mm
Pages: 384 (plus 4pp cover)
Format: Hardback, black foil-blocked type on cover
Printing: Litho
Colours: CYK + one special
Special colour: Salmon fluoro (THSX0339 Unit Ed. – Universal Fluoro Red
Inks: Toyo Ink LED-UV
Cover image: 2,000 unique tipped-in images; high gloss lamination
Colours: CYK + one special
Typeface(s): GT Cinetype by Grilli type
Printer: GöteborgsTryckeriet, Mölndal
ISBN: 978-1-9164573-3-1

Unit Editions

What is Universal Everything? — Available for Pre-order

29 March 2019 in Books Comment

What is Universal Everything?

Available for pre-order now.

Editors: Adrian Shaughnessy, Tony Brook
Essays: Adrian Shaughnessy, Antonia Lee
Design: Spin

Edition of 2000 – unique ‘tipped-in’ image on each cover

About UE

“Universal Everything proves how effective a flexible, collaboration-based agency model can be to deliver awe-inspiring projects on a global scale.”
Creative Bloq

Unit Editions