…was printed here. This is Konelatomo Välikangas. The one and only existing hotmetal compositor in Helsinki. The Intertype compositor standing in the left side of the pic casts whole lines of text at once. The compositor composes the desired line of text by manually typing on the keyboard. That causes the matrix characters slide into place for casting. Spacing is done by adding metal (led) bits between individual matrices.When the whole set of matrices are in place, the hot liquid led is poured on top of the matrices. The result is a solid junk of metal, a mirror line of text. The line is then attached on its proper place together with the other lines of text. Then the printer inks the lines of text carefully and places the paper on top of them. The the printer rolls the cylinder of the press over the whole thing. When the print job is done all the lines are trown in the oven for melting and recasting.

The hot metal impression has absolutely wonderful three dimensional texture. This can’t be achieved in the modern offset printing. We highly recommend visiting Välikangas in Sörnäinen.

The Finnish Post organizes an annual competition for the most beautiful stamp of the year.

There were 58 stamps to choose from and 40 408 votes cast this year.

The second and third places were won by our National Park Pallas–Ylläs stamp (3773 votes), and the third by our Aurora Borealis green stamp (2798 votes). Thanks for the votes, everybody!

The winning stamp,  designed by Päivi Vainionpää, depicted the heart of all Finns – a sauna by the water (5 411 votes). Congratulations, Päivi!

For additional iformation, please visit the Finnish Post pages about the competition.

The Toimi redesign for Erto has been succesfully shortlisted in two categories in the Aikakauslehtikilpailu 2009 (Magazine contest 2009)  by Aikakausmedia. The aim of the contest is to reward good magazine creators and support good magazine design.

In the Lay-out of the year shortlist we compete with the Arkkitehti, Matkaan, and Next magazines. We also are a part of the shortilisted Editorial team of the year, with our passionate clients from Erto. The Erto team compete also in the Best Editorial shortlist. Well done!

We are anxiously waiting for the final results.

One of our long-lasting customers (we like long-lasting customers) commissioned, or approved to commission, yet a new incremental facelift. We think it’s the third we’ve done to it during the last years. Our mission this time was to sharpen the content concept a bit, introduce a couple new story possibilities, and to introduce the Metsäliitto new corporate identity to the magazine.

Metsäliiton Viesti is a magazine for all of Metsäliitto owners, with circulation around 135 thousand copies.

Exciting! Three of our designs, the Jätkäsaari launch, the Evita magazine logotype and the Toimi magazine redesign have reached the Vuoden Huiput (Best of the Year) annual design&advertising national competition yearbook.

The competition is organized by Grafia, the Finnish association of graphic designers. The final results will be announced later.

The Jätkäsaari launch by us was cordially supported by Madonna (not shown).

The Evita logo was done to maximize the target audience curiosity and to support the magazine strategy.

The Erto magazine went through a complete revamp. We thank a very good customer for this chance!