Memories » Maggies Cancer Care Centres

Memories book released!

GarrickWebster — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 13:22:40 +0000

After more than two years working on the Memories book project, we’ve finally launched the publication. The event took place last night at the impressive, award-winning Maggie’s Centre at Charing Cross Hospital in London. What a fantastic evening it was too with a whole host of artists and designers there to enjoy Freedom Organic Lager supplied by our drinks sponsor as well as wine, soft-drinks and nibbles.

It was a great feeling for all of us to meet and mingle with so many people who have contributed to the project. We’re really pleased to have launched the book in time for Christmas because it’s going to make the perfect gift for anybody inspired by beautiful and meaningful artwork and text.

The finished product is 182 pages, with a wonderful cover illustration sporting some stunning foiling and spot varnish effects, and all the awesome, heart-felt imagery inside. We’re selling them for just £10 each and 100 per cent of that money will go to Maggie’s Cancer Care Centres.

Bernie Byrne, the head of the Maggie’s Centre in London, was on hand to accept a cheque for £1000 – money we’ve raised through pre-orders of the book. She highlighted the parallels between the Memories book and the aims of Maggie’s, which builds wonderfully-designed modern centres where people can get follow-up support, information and counselling if they have a cancer diagnosis.

After reading Memories and reviewing the artwork, she said: “It’s a quality piece of work on all levels, it really values those people’s stories and their lives and the memories that they’ve given. So thank-you hugely; thank-you so much. Without this we couldn’t function, we couldn’t do the work that we do.”

It moved us to hear that. Johann Chan, an artist who illustrated Antony Kitson’s story about his father Brian, also got up to say a few words. “After reading Antony’s story, and seeing the intimacy between the father and son, I didn’t feel like I could do the story justice with the artwork because it was obviously something so loaded with emotions. It was a privilege to work on it with all these great artists,” he said.

We wouldn’t have been able to produce such a high quality book without the help of our print sponsors Taylor Bloxham, and the paper company Robert Horne Group. We have great respect for them and want to express our immense gratitude for helping us make Memories possible.

It was such a great evening. Thank-you to everyone who came, to Taylor Bloxham and Robert Horne Group, and to Maggie’s Cancer Care Centres for hosting the event.

Please order your copy of Memories by clicking here, and encourage others to support us too!

See the full set of photos on Flickr

Pre-order your copy now!

StuartBoyd — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 12:14:12 +0000

Guarantee your copy of Memories by pre-ordering it from the Subism website. Simply click the link above and select the correct ordering option depending on where you live, and we’ll send you a copy of the book as soon as it arrives back from the printers.

Inside you’ll find a dozen wonderfully written texts by people who have survived cancer, or lost a loved one to the disease. Each touching work is complemented with 12 illustrations by different artists who have interpreted the stories visually. All this has resulted in an incredible looking art book that’s bound to inspire you every time you pick it up.

Best of all, when you buy, the entire cover price will be donated Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres. The charity helps hundreds of cancer victims and their families every day, and each centre fosters an atmosphere of understanding, support and creativity.

The cover price is an extremely affordable £10 and we’ve added P&P and PayPal costs to make ordering as simple as possible for you. The great price has been possible thanks to our excellent printers Taylor Bloxham and our paper sponsor Robert Horne Group, who have donated their printing skills and the paper respectively. Without them, as well as all our artists and writers, this project would not have been possible. So hats off to these companies.

Pre-order today and support this great cause.

Joy of Living

GarrickWebster — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 17:14:02 +0000

Here’s a project that really resonates with what we’re doing. Max Fraser is the editor of the London Design Guide and he sadly lost his mother to a six-year battle with cancer. He decided to try and make a difference in the struggle against the disease by raising some money for charity, and turned to the contacts he’d met whilst making the London Design Guide.

What he did was he sent 100 designers a sheet of graph paper each, and simply asked them to do something creative with it. Some drew on it, some created patterns, and some of them cut it up into bits. Someone even made it into a doughnut. The next stage will be to auction off each piece of art. They’re all being shown at an exhibition at Somerset House, which starts next week.

Why not go along and see what the various talented designers have come up with? Perhaps you’ll spot a nice little number for the front hall, the study, or the living room? The show is on 15-21 March and you can find out more by clicking here. Participating creatives include Terence Conran, Troika, Rob Ryan and many more. And, just like the Memories project, all the proceeds will be going to the charity Maggie’s Cancer Care Centres. We wish Max Fraser the best with this project.

Hello, David Cousens

GarrickWebster — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 18:13:22 +0000

David Cousens of Cool Surface has joined the Memories project. He works in a modern, graphic novel style employing digital techniques, using his skills in book illustration – which sounds ideal for our project! He’s going to be creating an image for the Memories book, which will be sold to benefit Maggie’s Cancer Care Centres. His image will accompany the story Drying Paint by Antony Kitson. David’s family have also been touched by the disease and he lost his grandmother to it when he was 10. Although she never smoked, she worked in a cigarette factory and her husband and son were smokers and it took its toll. We thank David for joining the project. Please check out the Cool Surface website here.

Welcome Elliott Grubb aka Another Example

StuartBoyd — Tue, 25 May 2010 15:11:08 +0000

www.anotherexample.net

Hello Bel Johnstone

GarrickWebster — Fri, 21 May 2010 08:16:10 +0000

Today we welcome Bel Johnstone to the Memories project. She’s going to be creating an image for our book, which is in aid of the cancer charity Maggie’s, in response to a story about Tom Preston, who discovered he had leukemia at the age of 18. Bel has specialised in making images out of tiny dots to create forms, patterns and shading. It’s just like the stippling work of Seurat. More recently, she’s been experimenting with illustrated type and in some pieces the two techniques come together quite stunningly. Above you can see her interpretation of that famous line from Blade Runner. There’s a video of her painting the type on YouTube. We are super pleased that Bel Johnstone is working on an illustration for the book, all the way over there in Australia. Please take a look at her portfolio here.

The text is done!

GarrickWebster — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 16:50:16 +0000

Great news. Yesterday we subbed the final version of the final story to go into the Memories book. That makes for twelve ‘memories’, and the last piece was written by Gordon Kirk up in Scotland. His story tells the tale of how he discovered he had cancer six weeks after the birth of his daughter – a fraught and emotional experience. We don’t want to say too much about it, hoping that you will want to read the story when the book is finally published, but suffice to say that Gordon has done a great job talking about a difficult time in his life. Another interesting piece to the puzzle is that we discovered Gordon and his story through Maggie’s as he has benefitted from the good work the charity does and made good friends with other Maggie’s visitors while he was being treated. Maggie’s Cancer Care Centres will be the beneficiary of sales of the Memories book – find out more about what they do here.

Now, our job is to find more designers and illustrators to create their own visual responses to Gordon Kirk’s story, as well as the 11 other stories in the book.

More on Maggies

GarrickWebster — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 13:35:36 +0000

Just a quick posting about Maggie’s Cancer Care Centres. All the money we raise will be going to this charity and the BBC has done a short documentary all about Maggie’s. Watch it and you can see why a creative project like Memories fits so well with the charity. Design and creativity play a roll in what they do. For instance, the centres where they offer advice, councelling, group meetings and other support to cancer sufferers, were designed by people such as Frank Gehry and Richard Rogers. That’s a fine thing in itself but the architecture, floorplans and interior decor are all designed to make people feel comfortable in a Maggie’s Centre, while the people there help them come to terms with the disease. Follow this link to watch the documentary and find out a lot more about Maggie’s.

Rob Ryan's in. Ace!

GarrickWebster — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:40:06 +0000

When we went up to the Maggies Cancer Care Centre in Hammersmith to discuss donating the money we make from Memories to their charity, I noticed they were selling a card with an image on the front created by the illustrator Rob Ryan. We all thought it was a great idea to ask him to participate in Memories by creating an image for the book. But Rob is in the upper echelons of the illustration and design scene. His studio is very busy. Could we pull it off?

Well, folks, the dream has become a reality. Rob has accepted our brief and will be creating an image for The Fox Cubs, a story about leukemia survivor survivor Sarah Yates. He also sent over some encouraging words about the project, saying that working for Maggies is a great thing to be doing. We welcome Rob aboard and thank him for taking the time to do this. His work is some of the finest papercraft-based illustration going – he cuts out silhouette scenes, complete with texturing and letter work, from sheets of coloured paper. Intricate, unique and totally authentic are all words that spring to mind, as you can see by the example above, so check it out here.