Showing posts with label Takes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Takes. Show all posts

Innovation Takes Lancashire's Forrest & Jones Into New League



INNOVATION has been the key to continued growth for Preston-based magnetic wall-covering pioneers Forrest & Jones despite the nation’s on-going economic challenges, according to the company’s founder and Managing Director Gareth Jones.

While others have cut-back and concentrated on steering themselves through the economic slow-down, the directors at Forrest & Jones have launched three new and innovative product ranges that have caught the attention – and the imaginations of designers.


‘Magalomania’, a unique magnetic design system that can transform a wall into an aesthetically pleasing surface, that is also an effective and flexible education tool, is aimed at children’s nurseries, schools, playbarns and healthcare centres.


SwitchScene is a new magnetic display system using the latest innovations in removable and re-usable magnetic graphics which has sparked excitement in the advertising and retail sectors.


Seamless Wallpaper is a PVC free, tough, polyester woven fabric that can be produced up to five metres high and by any length required and which boasts a pin-sharp print quality. It is proving to be a hit with designers who don’t want to see the joins.


“We have a wealth of experience in the wallpaper and wall coverings business,” said MD Mr Jones, speaking from his office in Garstang Road, Broughton. “My fellow director Mark Forrest and I have been involved in the industry for many years, so we really do know what this business is about.


“That’s why our team has been able to come up with new ideas like ‘Magalomania’ and ‘SwitchScene’ because in addition to having the technical know-how to create the product, we also understand the market place well enough to predict whether there will be sufficient demand.


“Magalomania has already been taken up by the Lake District National Park. A Magalomania wall has been created at the South Lakes Visitor Centre at Brockhole and SwitchScene has been snapped up by a number of customers across the North West.”


Mark Forrest, who later this year will celebrate four decades in the wallpaper and wall covering industry said: “We are so confident in our new products that we have invested heavily in new state-of-the-art printing machinery here at our base in Broughton. We really are ready for more growth.”


Gareth said he believed that early signs of an increasing sense of positivity in the business community would continue.


“Here at Forrest & Jones, we’ve got every faith in our new range of products,” he added. “We’re ready and fully prepared for growing demand.”


For further information about Forrest & Jones click onto: www.forrestandjones.com.


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Software Takes Command



Software has replaced a diverse array of physical, mechanical, and electronic technologies used before 21st century to create, store, distribute and interact with cultural artifacts. It has become our interface to the world, to others, to our memory and our imagination - a universal language through which the world speaks, and a universal engine on which the world runs. What electricity and combustion engine were to the early 20th century, software is to the early 21st century. Offering the the first theoretical and historical account of software for media authoring and its effects on the practice and the very concept of 'media,' the author of The Language of New Media (2001) develops his own theory for this rapidly-growing, always-changing field.

What was the thinking and motivations of people who in the 1960 and 1970s created concepts and practical techniques that underlie contemporary media software such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Maya, Final Cut and After Effects? How do their interfaces and tools shape the visual aesthetics of contemporary media and design? What happens to the idea of a 'medium' after previously media-specific tools have been simulated and extended in software? Is it still meaningful to talk about different mediums at all? Lev Manovich answers these questions and supports his theoretical arguments by detailed analysis of key media applications such as Photoshop and After Effects, popular web services such as Google Earth, and the projects in motion graphics, interactive environments, graphic design and architecture. Software Takes Command is a must for all practicing designers and media artists and scholars concerned with contemporary media.

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