Rough Trade Books — Various
Client: Rough Trade Books
Agency: Office Of Craig
Deliverables: Publication / Print / Social and Marketing
Role: Designer
Rough Trade Books is the sister company to Rough Trade Records and Rough Trade Shops. And much in the mould of the pioneering independent label, it brings that same original spirit and radical direction to the world of book publishing.
The Rough Trade Books team have a close collaborative partnership with Office Of Craig, meaning that each publication and piece of print published has been carefully curated and crafted by the design team, together with the publisher and authors themselves.
Publications of various shapes, sizes and subjects have been published in the last three years, including I’m A Fan by Sheena Patel (who has been named as a top 10 Debut Novelist by the Observer), Egg and Spoon by artist and illustrator Rose Blake who explores her relationship with her father, artist Sir Peter Blake and I Am The Mother Cat by poet, artist and curator Ella Frears for National Poetry Day 2021. Alongside these sit Rough Trade Editions, a series of quarterly pamphlets that bring together artists, writers, poets, musicians, photographers, illustrators, and thinkers, to tell the stories of why counter-culture matters.
The pamphlet has always been favoured by those on the periphery, and has long been a means of fulfilling needs neglected by mainstream markets or disapproved of by conventions. With the mass marketplace saturated with the foiled and the frilly, Editions are the antidote—a perfect platform for dissent, debate, discourse, and ideas.
Rough Trade Editions Series 7
Published 2020
No. 39 Tender Hearted Bold Moves — The Fandangoe Kid
No. 40 Algorithm Party — Roy
No. 41 Noting Voices: Contemplating London’s Culture — Haseeb Iqbal
No. 42 Acme Attractions — Jeanette Lee & Don Letts
Pink Moon (Special Edition)
Marcel Dzama, Sufjan Stevens, Hannah Peel
Published 2021
In Pink Moon, artist Marcel Dzama presents a raft of new works inspired by travelling through Mexico and Morocco which touch on the wonder that travel and the strange immersion in cultures aside from one’s own can so often engender.
This special edition includes a 7” picture disk featuring compositions by Sufjan Stevens and Hannah Peel both covering Nick Drake’s Pink Moon.
Rough Trade Editions Series 8
The Art Series
Published 2021
No. 43 ideas for a new art world — The White Pube
No. 44 BEEF! The Guide — Wilfred Wood
No. 45 The Poetess Of The Pyramids: Notes Towards a Fictional Memoir — Robert Rubbish
No. 46 Art Is The Thing Nobody Asked You To Do — Babak Ganjei
Flashback:
Parties For The People—By The People
Flashback tells the story of the infamous Blackburn Acid House ‘parties’, the vital part this moment of counter-cultural history has played in the social, economic and cultural lives of the area itself, and more broadly, of the country as a whole.
Published 2021
Pamphlet 1:
Spit, Sawdust And Spirit: The Ingenious Players In Blackburn’s Acid House Parties — Alex Zawadzki
Lines Written A Few Miles Outside Blackburn, On Revisiting The Site Of The Sett End Pub, April 10, 2021 — Anna Wood
Pamphlet 2:
Thesis Flashback — Balraj Singh
High On Hope: Politics And The Parties — Feral Kinney
Pamphlet 3:
Howling Roughs — Jamie Holman
A Place Called Bliss — Adelle Stripe
Fold Out:
Blackburn Love: A Blueprint — Dorothy
I Am The Mother Cat
(National Poetry Day 2021 Signed Edition)
Ella Frears
Published 2021
Ella Frears’ I Am The Mother Cat charts, interrogates and attempts to take stock of what will surely come to be understood as one of the most surreal and haunting periods the country has known.
This special edition also includes a fold-out entitled No Paintings, Sorry which features poems by John Hansard Gallery Assistants for National Poetry Day 2021.
I’m A Fan
Sheena Patel
Published 2022
In this incredible debut novel, Sheena Patel announces herself as a vital new voice in literature, capable of rendering a range of emotions and visceral experiences on the page. Sex, violence, politics, tenderness, humour—Patel handles them all with both originality and dexterity of voice.
Since the release of I’m A Fan in early 2022, Sheena Patel has taken the world by storm. Featured as Book of the Day on both The Guardian and Stylist Magazine, I’m A Fan was also named Foyles Fiction Book of the Year 2022. And Sheena has been names as a Top 10 Debut Novelist by The Observer.
Egg and Spoon
Rose Blake
Published 2022
In Egg and Spoon, the artist and illustrator Rose Blake tells the story of a childhood fuelled on art and creativity, infused with travel and steeled by the more quotidian aspects of family life growing up with the artist Peter Blake. Surrounded by a cast of originals and eccentrics and taking in backdrops such as London, L.A. and Paris, Blake creates poetic snapshots of a family, with the joys of a life dedicated to art and the inevitable fragilities and poignancy of age and, pertinently, ill health.
