Congratulations to the other winners: Barbara Brown, John Hamilton, TILT Design, Why Not Associates, Micha Weidmann Studio and Mat Maitland.

A few months ago Zerofee entered Just Add Stock, an Eye Magazine competition judged by key figures in the design industry – Aporva Baxi, Pam Bowman, Deyan Sudjic and Tom Hind, Director of Photography at Getty Images. On this occasion the jurors sought work which successfully and innovatively used stock imagery combined with high-calibre design values.

This prestigious design publication has always been of great importance to us and continues to hold its own in an increasingly competitive and difficult marketplace. Normally, time (or principles) wouldn’t allow us to entertain entering awards schemes but, since a large percentage of our work, by necessity, features stock imagery, we felt Just Add Stock was an important award to participate in.

Not ones to normally blow our own trumpet, on this occasion we feel the outcome certainly warrants mention, as the panel awarded us outright winners in the Reports and Brochures category for our design donation work on a broadsheet publication to support the Angola 3 campaign. We’re also excited to see Zerofee and this project featured on the Eye Blog as an extension of the magazine coverage.

As with all the work that’s undertaken by Zerofee, we’re choosy about who we work with and their overall background story – their social/environmental footprint. Once a project is accepted, donated or commercial, we put all efforts into creating the best solution, and in this case, that effort culminated in a powerful, printed outcome – we’re thrilled to have it recognised by key industry figures.

The project was created for Bondage for Freedom, a campaign collective brought together by Sam Roddick and Jamie Catto. We’ve previously posted on the subject of the campaign and the design solution so, if you’d like to learn a bit more about the Angola 3 and the design decisions that we implemented, take a look here.

TRAID have traditionally stayed in touch with supporters with a straightforward A4 newsletter, produced entirely in–house. We’ve worked with them to produce a 16 page, tabloid format replacement for this called ‘Behind The Seams’, with design values that reflect TRAID’s interests and standards – more space, more imagery, more style, but not at the expense of detail about projects that they’ve funded or achievements they’ve made.

Rather than just dropping through letterboxes, they will also soon be available in all of TRAID’s stores around London and Brighton. Alongside current news, every issue will carry fundamental details about TRAID’s objectives and processes, as the highstreet stores continually attract custom from shoppers who love the clothes and experience, but want to learn more about the story. The new format allows staff to press the answers into the customer’s hands at the tillpoint.

Printed on 48gsm recycled newsprint, we’ve tried to play to the strengths of the medium, with black and white imagery, combined with areas of bright, largely pure C,M or Y ‘lenses’ of colour which also carry folio numbers. While there’s a solid grid behind the whole document, TRAID’s eclectic nature is seen in a mixture of playful typefaces and ephemeral shapes. Generally, the design has survived the bumpy ride of web offset printing pretty admirably. Hopefully, each following issue will diversify in certain respects, creating a series which TRAID fans might like to collect.

You can have a browse of a lo-res PDF below (if you’re sporting a Flash plugin) courtesy of Issuu. Really interested parties might like to click it to go full-screen, so the text can be seen more clearly (try to ignore any other publications that appear on the right hand side, their not with us, we can assure you…). Anyone after a physical copy might like to pop into one of TRAID’s shops, but you’ll have to be quick.

The Angola 3 – Robert King, Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace – were all imprisoned on different charges in Louisiana’s Angola prison in the late 1960s. In 1972, Albert and Herman were convicted of the murder of a prison guard; Robert was linked to the case by the authorities, but not charged. As a result, all three were removed to solitary confinement and suffered inhumane and unjust treatment lasting, in the case of Robert King (released after pleading a lesser charge), almost 30 years. Albert and Herman spent 36 years in such conditions, only being removed to maximum security when lawyers and activists took up their cases and brought the details of their charges and trials into question. They remain behind bars. Robert King has, since his release, worked to bring attention to the plight of the Angola 3 and the charges against Albert were dropped in March 2008. Despite this, he and Herman remain incarcerated.

Zerofee had an opportunity in the summer of 2008 to contribute to the ongoing appeal for justice for the Angola 3 by donating awareness-raising, broadsheet format literature designed in conjunction with Bondage for Freedom, Coco de Mer’s campaigning organisation lead by Sam Roddick. We worked closely with Sam to design and produce the broadsheet in the space of a single weekend and the outcome is a 12 page narrative by Robert King, accompanied by facts about the Angola 3, their case and the situations faced by others like them in the US prison system.

The broadsheet is a good example of how creative freedom, focussed with time and budgetary pressure, coupled with a great client can result in powerful, donated design work that helped bring a cause to the attention of many people who would not, perhaps, have shown interest. Initially distributed at protests, but since reprinted in a smaller tabloid format for various other situations, it has been an extremely positive project for us and the visual/tactile result is one we’re particularly proud of. The typographic treatment (featuring Rian Hughes’ Hawksmoor and Zuzana Licko’s Mrs Eaves) resonated with those involved in the ongoing campaign and was later applied to a very quick title sequence (read: briefed and completed in a matter of hours) for a music video made by Quiet Storm Films called ‘Bars’:

For more information about the Angola 3, please visit www.angola3.org

If you have a real interest in typography, you’ll have heard of Alan Kitching, the renowned letterpress designer. Alan’s work has been featured in numerous design publications, commissioned by top advertising agencies and has helped to keep interest in the craft alive. You may not have heard of Celia Stothart but, alongside Alan, her passion for design, typography and letterpress is equally evident.

Alan and Celia gave a talk back in March at the London College of Communication (LCC), as part of their ‘Changing Face of Letterpress’ events and exhibition. A while back now but, for those of us that missed it, Alex Cooper and Rose Gridneff (who run the letterpress workshop and teach at the LCC, as well as operating their own practise/studio, The Experimental Letterpress Workshop) have made the talk available as a video podcast. The imagery above is screen-grabbed from the podcast, just to give you a flavour.

The talk is highly recommended and delivers insights into Alan’s early career, facilities, his and Celia’s love of letterpress and a year-long effort to recover an enormous cache of unloved woodtype from a barn in Somerset. For anyone who’s only experience of typography has been digital, seeing how woodtype’s printed appearance can be inadvertently ‘filtered’ by woodworm – resulting in an tactile, distressed look usually just simulated onscreen – should be required viewing.

You can download the Alan Kitching and Celia Stothart lecture as a video podcast from iTunes. Clicking the link (should) open iTunes and take you to the correct page.

You can follow the LCC and Rose Gridneff on Twitter at @lcclondon and @rosegridneff respectively

Besides their presence on the highstreets of London and Brighton, TRAID extend their mission to educate on the subjects of world poverty and the environment to secondary schools. The sessions, delivered in person by TRAID, have proven very popular and help to get young people to think about the impact of their fashion and recycling choices on the world at large. However, with over 3200 secondary schools in the UK, it’s impossible for TRAID to attend every classroom. To meet the demand for their lessons and activities, we’ve helped them create ‘Behind the Seams’, an education pack which provides the information and structure to enable teachers to deliver the same insights and messages of sustainability.

The pack, produced almost entirely with recycled and/or sustainably-sourced materials (right down to the Cellogreen, a compostable gloss, silk and matt laminate) and features, amongst other things consciousness-raising posters, lesson plans, DVD and a current TRAIDremade collection – a great way of demonstrating that recycled, environmentally friendly fashion can be contemporary and as beautifully shot and presented as any other.

Hopefully, the materials and lessons they support will make young people think about their role in the fashion industry, either as a direct participant or – almost unavoidably – as a consumer. One of the posters features a boy similar to the young people they’re intended for, except he was ‘bought’ for £80 and sews cheap garments for the west in conditions that make the average school look magnificent. Hopefully, the delivery of messages like this will move even the most reluctant student to be grateful for an opportunity to be in class today.