Escape the symptoms of SAD with Studio C&C's tropical printerly cure

About a month ago we stepped off a gloomy grey street in east London and into the rays of an indoor sunshine. At Protein Space in east London a giant orange light was recreating the warmth that emanates from the sun, a steelpan ensemble in the corner was spewing out tropical melodies, and a whole wall plastered in fluorescent illustration and artworks was attracting everybody within a five metre radius, like moths to a printerly flame. The occasion was S.A.D, a weekend exhibition put on by the lads behind Studio Calm & Collected to assuage the symptoms of seasonal affective disorder, brought on by the relentless British winter.

Four weeks on, and the admirable (and enormous) collaboration which sparked the exhibition in the first place has been condensed into a chunky A3 size publication which is basically full of joy. It is composed of over 100 pages worth of illustration and art submissions from 30 different creatives reflecting on the theme, and includes work by Ellie Andrews, Jay Wright, Thomas Slater, Jack Taylor and Laura Callaghan, among a bunch of others. We spoke to Alex from Studio C&C about the project, and to find out a bit more about their creative endeavour.

Can you tell us a bit about Calm & Collected?

Studio C&C is a three-man creative studio based in sunny south London. It is a platform for collaborative projects, commercial design work, art exhibitions, small-scale publication runs and just about everything in between.

What was the concept behind S.A.D?

Winter in London can be dull, like really dull, so about a year ago we decided to make a small zine of brightly coloured visuals to showcase some of our friends’ work, and act as a midwinter pick-me-up. We became kind of obsessed with the whole idea of seasonal affective disorder and how it could inspire us/the reader creatively. We got a little bit carried away and soon enough the small zine that we planned had snowballed into a 100+ page large format publication that comes with a mouse mat!

The beauty of self-initiated projects is that you can literally do whatever you want, and with the help of all of the contributors involved we did exactly that. This is the sort of project that no-one would ever commission us to do – so we used it as a great excuse to experiment with daring colour schemes and a kind of OTT hyper-aesthetic.

Aside from the SAD aspect of the book, we felt it necessary to showcase some of the amazing emerging talent that London has to offer. Providing a platform for these artists and designers to be seen was outlined in the original concept for the book. We wanted to publish a large volume of exciting and original content, but in an ambitious, handmade artist book format that we hadn’t seen done before; an object which would serve as a record for what contemporary illustration/design/comics etc (predominantly in London) mean now in 2015.

Did you have any key references when designing the book?

We were very influenced by the design features of Idea Magazine and the artwork of Tadanori Yokoo, which may show through in certain places. The general mantra was creating progressive and experimental artwork rather than a rehearsal of what might be expected. The book itself wasn’t “over-designed” though, we’ve tried to just allow the artwork of each page to speak for itself and flow naturally.

Most of the design decisions were born out of necessity and dictated by the limitations in place. For instance, A3 is the largest sheet size (for now) that Riso is capable of printing in Europe, so the dimensions of the book were pretty much decided for us. Likewise, the plastic bolts were a practical way of dealing with the pages not being folded as sections. They also allow the reader to take the book apart and display separate pages if they wish. We’ve been keen to do a large format book with lots of insert pages for a while now, so hopefully this has satisfied everyone and we can move on!

What were the biggest challenges in putting the book together?

Anyone will tell you that working on a project with a large number of artists can be challenging. Logistically there’s a lot of effort involved in managing and curating the work, opinions and ideas of over 30 people, that was the most ambitious part of the project – but also what ultimately made it more interesting and exciting. The whole thing was quite a demanding project to take on for a studio of our size, however the publication was very much a collaborative effort between everyone involved. We had a lot of help behind the scenes from the contributors and sponsors, so a huge thanks to everyone for helping make it happen!