North - Extracts from Visual Identities (Signed Copy) + Appendix

North - Extracts from Visual Identities (Signed Copy) + Appendix

The long-awaited monograph of the UK’s leading graphic design and branding agency

The world is full of design companies, but none of them are like North. Formed in 1995 by Sean Perkins, the studio has always followed a highly individualistic path. This individualism manifests itself in many ways: most notably in the absence of a densely populated studio website; there are no hyperactive social media feeds; even the studio’s name, derived from Perkins’ origins in the unmetropolitan north of England, stands for frill-free, plain speaking, visual directness. It’s almost as if North is a well-kept secret. Yet the group has a devoted worldwide following, and attracts myriad clients keen to hire them for their ability to produce memorable and carefully engineered visual identities.

North’s work is the product of sharp-brained research, high-end craft and precise visual expression. And as can be seen in the pages of this book, the studio’s first monograph, the result is a rich crop of brand identities, packaging, exhibitions, books, posters and logos. It includes work for Tate, Southbank, Munch (Oslo), Co-op, Barbican, Samsung, Meta, Science Museum, The Royal Mint and M+ (Hong Kong). On the grounds that graphic design is required to ‘speak for itself’, the book dispenses with descriptive or biographical texts. Instead, the reader is engaged by more than 300 pages of articulate and eloquent visual expression, arranged in a rigorously planned mix of photography, typography, layout and colour.

Like North itself, the book is unlike other design books. That’s what makes it a North book.

Sean Perkins, Jeremy Coysten and Stephen Gilmore are British design studio North, where they have worked on a series of iconic corporate identities for a folio of renowned clients. They are all members of the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI)

Each copy of the signed book includes a complimentary 16-page publication containing over 100 previously unreleased logos created by North. The appendix showcases rejected designs and alternate routes from various North projects, serving as a catalog of the ones that did not make the final cut, according to the studio's Sean Perkins.

The trio signed the copies at the event at UNITOM on the 17th of October, 2024. 

• Size: 300 x 230mm
• Pages: 308 pages
• Format: Case bound
• Printing/binding: Four-colour process including two Pantones (PMS 871 Gold and PMS 877 Silver) and gloss coat on both sides of gloss paper. Thread-sewn book block and case-bound with square spine and Winterband 406 H&T bands
• Printer/binder: Pureprint
• Cover: Yellow (BRI4058) Brillianta cloth-mounted over 2500mic greyboard. Foil-blocked in white
• Endpapers: Colorplan Factory Yellow 135gsm and one Pantone (PMS 877 Silver) and Premier Coat on the face
• Papers: White Gloss (FSC) 130gsm (plus gloss coat) and Munken Lynx Rough Natural White 120gsm (plus premier coat)
• Typeface: Neue Haas Unica