Newspaper Club

The other day this strange envelope landed on our doormat.

Actually, it’s not really that strange. It’s a preview copy of sixth installment of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy written by Eoin Colfer.

Publisher Penguin decided to release a very limited number of preview copies in a newspaper format.

Which gave us another chance to show off the clunkily named Bespoke Division of Newspaper Club. Just like the one we made for the BBC, we designed this one from scratch using humans rather than ones and zeros. And it’s another example of something smart and unusual you can do with the newspaper format.

As befits a HHGTTG publication the newspaper contains all sorts of hidden messages. Like this.

And these yellow dots. When you collect all the letters with yellow dots you get… you’ll have to work that out.

All of the lines in these illustrations are at 42 degrees.

As it was a preview copy, Penguin didn’t want all the text in the newspaper. So, about half way through the story this happens.

There’s a nice poster in the middle which reminds me to tell you that the book is published on 12th October. More details here.

A lovely project. If you’d like to find out more about bespoke newspapers give Ben a call on 07966 282 286 or drop him a line at ben@riglondon.com

Two weeks ago James Bridle created a beautiful looking newspaper called Book Club Boutique.

This one was a little different to the ones we’ve tried before. James designed the newspaper himself using traditional graphic design software and then handed it over to us to print.

This feels like a thing lots of people would like to do and cunningly demonstrates another aspect to Newspaper Club.

Rather than me tell you all about it, I’ll hand over to James;

“The Book Club Boutique is a weekly literary night in Soho bringing together new writers, performance poets and musicians in a suitably decadent atmosphere. Founded by Selena Godden and Rachel Rayner in January 2009, it’s since hosted everything from book launches to open mic nights, Pink Gin summer parties to London short stories, and celebrations of Gay Pride and Burlesque Against Breast Cancer.

BCB is appearing on tour at a number of festivals this summer, and programmed all the literary content for Standon Calling, a small festival in Hertfordshire, last weekend. We thought this would be an excellent opportunity to publicise the BCB and its writers, and a newspaper that festival-goers could read while lazing in the sun (fingers crossed) seemed like an excellent way to do this.

So we pulled together contributions from about 25 of our best writers, including poetry, short stories, a horoscope and a gossip column, and even some paintings, and with much help from Newspaper Club made a 16-page newspaper true to the spirit of BCB. We’ll be distributing it around London in the following weeks, and we’ll let you know how it goes down…”

As ever, there are loads more pictures on Flickr. If you’d like to do something similar to James, give Ben a call on 07966 282 286 or ben@riglondon.com