Michael Balcon

Print Design, Book Design

Sir Michael Balcon was a pioneer of the British Film industry, producing some massive UK film titles at Ealing, working with the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and co-founding The Odeon cinema to name just a few of his accolades. Birmingham City University honoured him with an exhibition about his life and work and then latterly asked us to produce a book of the exhibition materials.

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The brief was to take the material from a previous exhibition and construct a book to commemorate Sir Michael Balcon so we worked closely with key stakeholders to construct a structure/narrative as well as advising on formats and visual styles that would be suitable. We took inspiration from the typography in the source-material to create a title-treatment and hand-crafted a little spear and flag logo to reflect the moniker of “Birmingham’s Film Knight”.

The desired design output was a coffee-table style book – something that would be very visually appealing and enjoyable to flick through. We selected a landscape format to showcase some amazing, archival photographs and posters and we crafted chapters around different parts of Balcon’s career.

The ultra-limited book was to be printed in two versions. A softcover and also Case-bound, hardcover. We consulted on materials and finishing, selecting an embossed cover with gold foil to front. We managed the printing of the book to a tight schedule for the book to be presented to Sir Michael Balcon’s grandson, Daniel Day Lewis at a private event at the University.