Nobrow @ Pick Me Up

Natasha Demetriou joined Nobrow six months ago. As the imprint’s graphic designer, she works under the creative direction of founders Alex Spiro and Sam Arthur. Here she explains a little about their history and what they're showing at Pick Me Up...

"Nobrow began with Nobrow 1. Alex and Sam invited 24 artists to submit work based on the theme ‘Gods and Monsters’.

They’ve since gone on to do other, more narrative-led books, but still follow the practice of using spot colour printing methods, a method little used today that nonetheless has a very distinctive look. It gives us the opportunity to print on amazing paper with really bright inks, so that the illustration work really stands out.

Nobrow is their baby, but I like to think that I have a little bit of input into how things look as well. I work as a design assistant, sometimes talking about colours a bit, but mostly I’m concerned with the physical elements of the books and print production.

We didn't create anything specifically for Pick Me Up, as everything was already in the pipeline. We just pushed things forward so that we could have them ready for the show. Rise and Fall was launched at this event and it's done exceptionally well. It's a concertina book illustrating the rise of the dinosaurs and their inevitable downfall, by artist Micah Lidberg.

Pick Me Up is currently the only place where the whole of the Nobrow collection is on sale. There are a couple of titles missing; one is sold out and the other one wasn't ready in time.

We’re actually opening up a gallery and a shop on the 27th of May on 62 Great Eastern Street in Shoreditch. We’ve basically built a wall and split our studio in half. We work in one half, the other half is where the gallery / shop is going to be, and downstairs is the print room. This will be our flagship store..."

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Image: Sylvain Deleu