Colour & Books

29/07/2022

Perhaps my biggest joy in making books is to people I get to work with amd their stories. This one definitely stands out in that perspective. Photographer Patrick van Dam grew up near an air force base. While gazing at the planes coming and leaving he dreamt of becoming a pilot. Instead he focussed on his talent in drawing and design. He started to design patches for the fighter pilots. And he became one of the most sought designers of these by fighter pilots all over the world. And so he acquiered connections to gain access to the US 493rd fighter squadron. Over years het got to photograph ordinary life at the base, went along on missions. And landed in the back seat of an F15 Eagle high up in the skies.
All of this comes together now in this beauty of a book, co-designed by SYB and Patrick, wonderfully printed in 5-colours and bound with great eye for detail. And not purely coincidental the moment of publication also marks the 50th anniversary of the F15 Eagle.
You can order the book at:

https://www.missionready-thebook.com

30/08/2021

Teaming up with printers is crucial for
Me to get the quality I am known for. Half of job is realised by me at my studio preparing image files. Getting it printed right involves team work with the guys on press and the project managers at the plant. They put so much energy in keeping the colour management system updated and well tuned. And they bring their knowledge and experience on the table. So here’s to all those great partners in print I work and have worked with: Wilco Art Books; Die Keure, NPN printers, PlatformP, Ofset Yapimevi, Optimal Media, Petit, Kopa printing, Graphius, Zwaan/Lenoir and those that are no longer operational.

06/07/2020

A book that I’m working on with Michael Lange. And we’re theowing in all we have to make it special.

"surrounded by summits, ravines and slopes"
Preorder COLD MOUNTAIN on Kickstarter now – bit.ly/2YCl3hA
ROBERT MORAT | GALERIE
Hartmann Projects
Colour & Books

01/05/2020

It started with my friend and book binder Wytze Fopma (FopmaWier) and me checking the book stalls along The Seine river in Paris. We talked, as so often, about making books. I picked up a book that I really appreciated for its qualities as an object. One of the things that struck me was the absence of a prominent joint. This in a regularly and machine bound book forms a deep and prominent fold running along the spine. A feature I don't always appreciate so much. Wytze and I started discussing options of achieving this in production. Of course credits for this go to him. My part in the process was merely encouraging him. A first dummy was created and now the first book in production was realised: The Rustle of Touch by Ellen Korth (https://www.ellenkorth.com/boeken/the-rustle-of-touch). How elegant this looks! Makes me so happy. And we're al ready discussing new options in refining binding, combining old techniques with todays possibilities.
On my website you can read more about binding in my blogposts: https://www.colourandbooks.com/binding-3/

As I'm also very happy with how we managed to tune the printing process. The central part of this book contains series of images of ancient underwear photographed on light boxes, giving the images a very transparent and light feel. Translating this in CMYK in ink is a delicate process. Ink is a very heavy paste. Together with reflective light on paper it doesn't give this light atmosphere easily.

09/04/2020

A book I recently finished and really like is Ruben van Schalm's first book 'Paradise' (http://www.rubenvanschalm.com/blog/tag/PARADISE), which is published by Uitgeverij Komma (www.uitgeverijkomma.nl). Ruben approached me early stages. He had this series he wanted to make a book with. In a conversation we established what his ambition exactly was and I introduced him to designer Amir Avraham. Together Ruben and Amir came up with this beautiful concept about Paradise. And the three of us defined the right specifications for production in which the black and white images are printed in duotone with a spot varnish on slightly bulky coated paper (Arctic Volume) and the images of nature are printed on Lessebo uncoated paper. With Ruben I worked on toning his photo's of nature and of course I prepared all images for printing. Production management was also in my hands. For printing we worked with Petit in Lublin, Poland who has put in all dedication to work with us on realising the book to the highest standards. Erwin Olaf was so enthusiastic about the whole book he offered to write an introduction. All in all a great example of how talent and teaming up can really bring a book project to the next level.

02/04/2020

For histories sake, let’s commemorate here that right now we’re living amongst Covid 19 and all our normal doings have been affected. This brings me to start another line of posts. A series in which I zoom in on my bookshelves.
Here’s a book I worked on when being a project manager at Veenman Printers. Published in 2000 by D.A.P. It’s a monograph on Peter Halley, designed by COMA, Cornelia Blatter and Marcel Hermans. The book is called Peter Halley Maintain Speed.
It was a book that aimed to be top of the bill in every aspect.
It starts with pages full of colourful line drawings and ends with an explosion of colour. In between speed is what is maintained. Pages filled from edge to edge with installation shots, drawings, plates of works, diagrams, formulas and where we see text, there is colour underneath it too. And on all pages a continuing time line.
The colours used by Peter Halley are in many cases not reproducible in standard cmyk. I, as project manager with a special interest in lithography, wanted to find a way to extend the colour range without stretching the budget even further. And I found the solution using a different kind of offset inks, so called ‘din scale’ inks. Sadly not available any more. They had more pure cyan, magenta and yellow then what we use regularly. The disadvantage being you have less strong contrasts. The advantage was having a wider colour space. Here I didn’t mind so much about contrast. Colour was what we were looking for. And this proofed to be a success for the book.
Mind you for the plates for all paintings there was not only a shot made for the work it self. But also a shot of a beam fixed on a white wall with the beam being just as wide as the painting. So after montage of the painting over the beam, all plates would have the same white wall as back ground and have exact the same sort of drop shadow.
It was an astonishing and demanding project to be responsible for. A great one to remember.

23/04/2019

Recently I received first copies of a book I worked on with Rannveig Einarsdóttir. She came to me more than a year ago with this project about refugees living in refugee homes in Berlin, waiting for when they can start their life in a new country. We took a long road in which eventually she stopped working with her original designers and switched to Syb. His gift to understand the authors story and make it come to life in a book combined with my efforts on the individual editing of the images and the honest reportage Rannveig made created this book, of which I'm proud. And then Jos Morree, Wilco Art Books and Wytze Fopma made great contributions each of their own. All together we made the book Rannveig dreamed of having. And that is the true reward.
Provisional Life is self published with publishing imprint 'No Plan' ISBN 978-3-00-06956-5

23/04/2019

Recently I received first copies of a book I worked on with Rannveig Einarsdóttir. She came to me more than a year ago with this project about refugees living in refugee homes in Berlin, waiting for when they can start their life in a new country. We took a long road in which eventually she stopped working with her original designers and switched to Syb. His gift to understand the authors story and make it come to life in a book combined with my efforts on the individual editing of the images and the honest reportage Rannveig made created this book, of which I'm proud. And then Jos Morree, Wilco Art Books and Wytze Fopma made great contributions each of their own. All together we made the book Rannveig dreamed of having. And that is the true reward.
Provisional Life is self published with publishing imprint 'No Plan' ISBN 978-3-00-06956-5

06/03/2019

Exhibition catalogues. More and more do I get those books to work on. So far predominantly from clients in the US and Australia. They’re good fun to work on for me. I get to see a lot of art. Plus I can seriously contribute to a good representation of both the works depicted and the atmosphere of the exhibition. Often also a lot of archive material is brought in. They usually need a lot of cleaning and brightening up to turn them into well readable images.
Thanks to the designers that bring those books to me: Ziga Testen, Stuart Geddes, Laura Coombs, João Doria, James Goggin for the books shown here.
And thanks to the institutions that were willing to work with me: Griffith University, Nathan Queensland; Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane; New Museum, New York; Krannert Art Museum, Illinois; Monash University, Melbourne; Marres, Maastricht; RMIT, Melbourne; Surpllus, Victoria

27/02/2019

Finished! Misha Pipercic book ‘Once, when we were happy’. His self published book that focusses on loss of country and culture, becoming a refugee and adapting to a new life in a new country. Misha first came to me to talk about this project and show me his photo’s some three years ago. And now the book is there in a beautiful edit and design by Syb. I love the book and I love these intense processes.
Keep an eye on Misha’s website and Facebook presence to find out where and when the book will be launched.

31/01/2019

In this video I talk about what I think is essential to keap in mind when editing image in postproduction

22/01/2019

Wit photographer Misha Pipercic and designer Syb I worked on Misha’s book ‘Once when we were happy’. Some three years ago I first learned about this project when Misha came to my studio. We discussed possibilities and where to start. I suggested he first chooses a designer to work with. Now Syb has edited the book. I worked with Misha on the right atmosphere for his images and made conversions. And so we flew to printer Petit in Lublin, Poland, Misha and I and had a great cooperation with them in printing the book.

09/11/2018

Offprint Paris and we’re present again. Back at our favourite spot. The books are great, the crowd is good the location is awesome. Right until Sunday 5 pm. Come and see the books we worked on. We’ll be happy to welcome you.

12/10/2018

Here I am on press with Austrian photographer Rudi Strobl. We’re printing his first book ‘DYE’. It is about Paintball locations. And designer Rob van Hoesel created an edit where you get a feeling of slowly submerging under ground and enter ever more weird areas. Now to print this wild world full of dye, we came up with the idea to use neon inks instead of regular CMYK. But how to control the effect? How to narrow down the wildest colours, which would distract you from experiencing the whole image? Here I came up with the solution to create a 5th colour layer and construct a green channel that would tone down the excess of neon magenta. And it worked! So now the book is printed in CMY(neon)k + pantone green. Happy 😃

22/09/2018

Unseen Amsterdam 2018. A moment to show our pride in what we do and where we are. With Dana Lixenberg, Maya Handley, Suzanne Liem, Koos Breukel, 6xXX, Tiane Doan na Champassak, Barbara Hammer, Corinne Noordenbos, Simon Brugner, Peter Dekens, Wendy Marijnissen, Jos Jansen, Sandder Laanen, Gijsbert Hanekroot, Donald Weber, Rob Hornstra, Rinko Kawauchi, Hans van ser Meer, Ellis Doeven, Christine Riedell, Peter Nicolaï, ArtEZ Press.

11/09/2018

Tupac Biggie, the photoshoots for VIBE magazine, Dana Lixenberg’s newest publication on press here. 64 pages of contact sheets, polaroids, negatives, prints and repro’s of original publications and a gigantic poster in which you can trace in hundreds of screenshots how these images found there way in popular culture. For me it was a ball working on this iconic material to colour correct the repro’s and prepare them for print. Design: Linda van Deursen; published by ROMA Publications. Colour grading and separations Colour & Books, printing Wilco Art Books and drukkerij De Groot. All images Dana Lixenberg, of course.

30/08/2018

Shaky Ground by Peter Dekens on press. A book about Traces of World War 1 in Belgium and how people still are confronted by remains of the battles. Published by Eriskay Connection, designed by Rob van Rob van Hoesel, production Jos Morree Fine Books,
Lithography Colour & Books, printing Wilco Art Books.

28/08/2018

RawView Editions commissioned me to work on 2 of her new titles, one book by Kati Leinonen and one book by Hannamari Shakya. We print at Optimal Media two days in a row.
Kati’s book is about the stable where she used to ride horses in her youth. And now that she is back in Finnland, after having lived fir several years in England, she returned to horse riding at the very same stable.