CATEGORY

Letterpress

RANK


PRODUCTION DETAILS

Quantity

200

Page Count

Paper Stock

Crane's Lettra, 110lb cover

Number of Colors

7

Dimensions

16 × 20

Binding

Special Techniques


ADDL. DESIGN CREDITS

Designer

Norman Clayton

Illustrator

Keith Cranmer


ADDL. PRODUCTION CREDITS

Printer

Norman Clayton


TAGS

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LINKS

Classic Letterpress
Anne Willan Inc.

Poster by Classic Letterpress for Anne WillanPoster by Classic Letterpress for Anne WillanPoster by Classic Letterpress for Anne WillanPoster by Classic Letterpress for Anne WillanPoster by Classic Letterpress for Anne Willan


CLIENT

Anne Willan is the founder of the pres­ti­gious Ecole de Cui­sine La Varenne, which oper­at­ed in Bur­gundy, France, from 1991 until 2007. Willan is a rec­og­nized author­i­ty on French cook­ing, with more than 35 years of expe­ri­ence as a cook­ing teacher, cook­book author, and food columnist.


BRIEF

Anne asked me to design a poster that would demon­strate the evo­lu­tion of cook­book writ­ing through­out four cen­turies, across many coun­tries, begin­ning with four sem­i­nal cook­books. She came to me with the infor­ma­tion of each book and idea of using branch­es in a tree to show the progression.


APPROACH

The pur­pose was to cre­ate a beau­ti­ful and infor­ma­tive poster track­ing the devel­op­ment of cook­books through four cen­turies and half a dozen lan­guages. Kei­th Cran­mer was com­mis­sioned to paint a water­col­or illus­tra­tion of a tree which we then print­ed let­ter­press in four col­ors. The type was let­ter­pressed in three colors.

PRODUCTION LESSONS

One challenge was creating a satisfactory color separation from a watercolor painting and print it letterpress with two green and two brown ink colors. This was solved by the artist painting the four colors, in registration, on four different pieces of semi translucent watercolor paper on a light table. With this approach we maintained control of the color separation. The paintings were scanned, 150 line screen halftones made, and film output. Photopolymer plates were used for the art and type. The printing was successful in making it look like the tree is an actual watercolor painting.

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