Asbury & Asbury

Pentone Boxset

To coincide with the opening of the After Hours exhibition (see yesterday’s post), we’ve produced a Pentone Boxset, featuring the same 30 swatches that are now on display at the Jerwood Space. The boxset is available to order from today.

The postcards are presented in a very smart (if we say so ourselves) box, handmade by a company in Manchester. It contains 30 A6 postcards, ranging from the tear-jerking Pentone Sad to the laugh-a-minute Pentone Funny, via some disturbing detours to Pentone Drunk and Pentone Horseshit.

We hope it’s not just an enjoyable read, but also a useful aid to creative thinking and writing. But you’ll be the judge of that.

The boxset is on sale in our new Tictail store. We’ve been using Tictail to sell diaries since Disappointments Diary launched last year, but we’ve now expanded it to include Pentone Boxsets, copies of Corpoetics (still flogging that one) and the few Pentone mugs we have left.

For his generous advice on the production of the boxsets, we want to thank Jack Jackson of Polite, an independent art publisher from the same hometown as us. Among many other things, Polite produces postcard sets on behalf of artists and photographers including Peter Blake, David Shrigley, Kevin Cummins, Harry Hill and Factory Records. We’ve used the same format for the Pentone Boxset, and we’re pleased with the way it’s turned out. (There’s a subtle nod of respect to Polite in the layout of the text on the boxset cover, but this is a more upfront thank-you.)

Buy the Pentone Boxset
More on After Hours
More from Polite 

After Hours at the Jerwood

Things have been busy lately in the run-up to an unusual exhibition hosted by Jerwood Visual Arts at Jerwood Space in London. After Hours is a collection of personal projects by graphic designers. It opens this week and runs from 15 May to 23 June.

The exhibition is curated by Nick Eagleton of The Partners, who has gathered together a great list of contributors, including Robert Ball, Anthony Burrill, Phil Carter, Michael Johnson, Joe Phillips, Alan Kitching, Magpie Studio, Craig Oldham, Jack Renwick, Steve Royle, Jim Sutherland, Alex Swatridge and a selection of projects from the Young Creatives Network.

My contribution is a collection of 30 framed Pentone swatches, pictured above on our kitchen floor, but hopefully on a gallery wall by now.

Pentone is a project that began in 2006 when we produced a mailer of nine swatches, each containing a sample of a written tone of voice – a verbal play on the Pantone colour-matching system. It later evolved into postcards, greetings cards and mugs. But I’ve always felt it should turn into some kind of ‘definitive’ collection at some point, and this exhibition has been the catalyst to make it happen. The 30 swatches are mainly new ones, with a handful of old ones mixed in – Pentone Boring remains as dull as ever.

To coincide with the exhibition, we've produced a Pentone Boxset including all 30 swatches, more of which to follow.

There will also be a reading table at the gallery featuring publications from the contributors, with Disappointments Diary and Corpoetics both included.

As well as contributing to the exhibition, I’ve been working with curator Nick Eagleton on the writing that goes around it. The principle has been to keep it simple – it’s more about celebrating the contents of the exhibition rather than theorising about them. To that end, the opening panel in the exhibition contains a rhyming list of the many and varied items on display, an evocative taster to set the tone. For the detailed analysis, there will be a couple of talks at the Jerwood Space over the course of the exhibition, going into the thinking behind the work and the wider questions it raises.

I’ll write more about the exhibition over the coming weeks. For now, here are a few related articles:

Design Week feature
My contribution to a related Design Week voxpop
More from johnson banks
Details and visitor information

Every day is like Blue Monday

Today is Blue Monday, supposedly the most depressing day of the year, but in reality a PR ruse with minimal scientific basis started by Sky Travel to flog holidays. Strangely, once you know that, it does turn it into the most depressing day of the year.

Nevertheless, it felt appropriate to post something today, as a brief nod of solidarity to all the people who have bought a Disappointments Diary and are making their way stoically through the year. Thanks to David Janes for mustering up the energy to send us the pictures above.

If you've bought a diary and would like to be added to the Twitter list of Disappointments Diarists, please let us know. No pleasantries necessary – just tweet us your Twitter name.

If you'd like to 'like' us on Facebook, you can't as we're not on Facebook.

If you haven't bought a diary, the bargain bin January fire sale is now on, so it's more in your price range now.

Finally, we're pondering what to do with the diary next year – so far all plans involve selling out in some way, or not doing anything. If you have any feedback or are currently sleeping with the global commissioning editor at Penguin, please let us know.

Happy Birthday Polite

We’re reasonably pleased to report that Disappointments Diary is being stocked at the Polite shop at the Hayward Gallery over Christmas.

It’s the only place the diary will be physically stocked, so if you’re based in London and want to try before you buy, you know where to go.

You should go anyway. Polite is a quietly brilliant company that has spent 12 years working with artists including David Shrigley, Harry Hill, Peter Blake, Magda Archer, Scott King, Factory Records, StudioThomson and plenty others. You have probably seen their greetings cards in various design shops. They also produce limited edition books and postcard sets. The aim is to make art more commercially accessible by producing affordable but desirable objects. And they are always beautifully produced.

Polite is celebrating its 12^th birthday and the shop opened at midday today, 12/12/12, so they are obviously good at planning things too.

More details of the shop here and on Design Week.

The diary is still for sale online at disappointmentsdiary.com

Downhill from here

We were delighted to find out Disappointments Diary has made it into the Guardian’s Christmas gift guide. No doubt there will be some compensating bad news soon enough.

The diary also sits grumpily at the bottom of the excellent We Made This gift guide. 

Thanks to everyone who has bought the diary, blogged about it, tweeted about it and generally been supportive.

For the uninitiated, Disappointments Diary 2013 is an appointments diary with a series of disappointing twists. It’s published by Asbury & Asbury, designed by Hat-trick Design and available in no good bookshops – only from disappointmentsdiary.com

Dispatching disappointment

An announcement for anyone who’s ordered a diary. Unfortunately, there’s been a slight hold-up in delivery from the printer – we were hoping to dispatch the first 1,000 today, but it looks like being early next week now. Non-ironic apologies for this. But rest assured, if you placed your order before Friday 9 November, your limited edition copy will be going out next week.

If you’ve placed an order since Saturday 10 November or are placing one now, it’ll be a non-limited-edition but nevertheless massively disappointing version. These will dispatch in the first week of December.

This whole thing has been an eye-opener for us. We underestimated the logistical challenge of parcelling up and labelling this many diaries. The picture above shows the youngest Asbury being roped in to help. (If you have concerns about child labour laws, you are right to.) But all the envelopes are printed and ready to go. We just need the diaries to arrive.

Disappointments Diary 2013 is a pocket-sized appointments diary with a series of disappointing twists. Initially produced in a limited edition of 1,000 copies, the diary is now available more widely. It's published by Asbury & Asbury, designed by Hat-trick Design, and available from disappointmentsdiary.com

Sold out and laboriously restocked

A couple of weeks ago, we announced the publication of Disappointments Diary 2013, an appointments diary with a series of disappointing twists, designed in collaboration with Hat-trick Design.

It came in a disappointingly limited edition of 1,000 numbered copies. The site has been open for advance orders, but the bulk won't ship until after 14 November (we're waiting on the main delivery). If you've ordered one, thanks both for the custom and your patience. All 1,000 are now accounted for, including about 25 that we kept back for ourselves.

In a rash and self-defeating business decision, we have now ordered some more. These won't be numbered and therefore come without that carefully contrived limited edition cachet. However, in all other respects, they are every bit as disappointing.

Again, there will be a delay between ordering and delivery. You can place orders any time at disappointmentsdiary.com, but orders placed from today won't ship until after 4 December. Still in good time for Christmas, and certainly for 2013 itself.

If you weakly succumb to one purchasing decision today, make it this one: disappointmentsdiary.com

2013: unlucky for all

Our last post announced the launch of Disappointments Diary 2013, a new publication from us in collaboration with Hat-trick Design. Here is a more exhaustively detailed description.

Disappointments Diary 2013 is a pocket-size (125mm x 85mm), week-to-view diary with a series of disappointing twists.

As well as functional information about notable dates, the diary includes a series of ‘Notable Deaths’, acting as a depressing reminder of the great people who have already left us. Sunset times are given in the ‘Onset Of Night’ section, while conversion charts include information on the relative weights of lead balloons and damp squibs.

Each week comes with a demotivational proverb, including ‘Genius is 99% perspiration and you’ve mastered that bit’, ‘There are plenty more fish in the vast, implacable ocean’, and ‘Another day, another net loss’.

A contacts section includes 'People Who Never Call', 'People You Owe Money', 'Imaginary Friends' and 'Imaginary Enemies'. Blank sections include 'Notes toward a dull novel' and 'Pointless doodles'. There are also maps of the London Underground (unhelpfully in black and white) and the M25.

Disappointments Diary 2013 is available in a limited edition of 1,000 numbered copies from disappointmentsdiary.com Advance orders are being taken, with first copies shipping on 14 November.

Sales are moving surprisingly non-sluggishly, so it's worth ordering soon if you want one. The more likely scenario is that you'll ignore this, have a change of heart in a couple of weeks, go to order one and find it's sold out because you were too slow as usual.

Disappointments Diary 2013

Today we launch a new publication: Disappointments Diary 2013.

An appointments diary with a series of disappointing twists.

Plenty more will be written about it on this blog, but for now, you can read some background on Creative Review.

First copies ship on 14 November, but we’re taking advance orders at disappointmentsdiary.com

It was a privilege to collaborate with Jim Sutherland of Hat-trick Design on this. He came up with an appropriately downbeat feel for the whole thing, including grey pages that get subtly darker as you make your way grimly toward the end.

More details next week. But why not just cut to the chase and buy one.