Sustainability

Recycled Christmas Cards

By Delphine Hirasuna | December 24, 2009September 4, 2014

snowman
For the past three years, Johnson Banks in London has done a year-end clean up by recycling their old magazines and passing them along to friends and clients in the form of Christmas greetings. This year the UK design firm ram-punched the shape of a snow man. A tip they passed along is that Design Week “punches brilliantly.” It could be the weight and uniformity of the paper that cuts clean, the vibrant ink holdout on the sheet, or good design karma projected from the magazine.

Pop Culture

Beatles Postage Stamps

By Delphine Hirasuna | November 11, 2009September 4, 2014

Finger

To mark the 50th anniversary of the meeting of Beatles’ John Lennon and Paul McCartney, the UK’s Royal Mail asked Johnson Banks to design a commemorative stamp. The London-based design firm conducted a sweeping audit of the masses of memorabilia surrounding the band and the cultural phenomenon that set off before concluding that “the answer was literally staring us in the face.” The Beatles album covers said it all.

In the end, Johnson Banks picked six covers to make into stamps. They explain on their website that their choices were made up of a “combination of the obvious ones like Sergeant Pepper and Abbey Road, plus ones we knew would look great small (With the Beatles and Help). Revolver was in because of its status as ‘the fans’ favourite album’ and Let It Be felt like a suitable ending.”