Anthony Burrill launches his online Archive of Collected Ephemera & Printed Material

Date
1 April 2016

Designer Anthony Burrill has launched his online Archive of Collected Ephemera & Printed Material, a website that gathers together examples of inspiring pieces of print, graphic design, typography and as the name suggests, other ephemera.

“I’ve always been an avid collector of printed ephemera and interesting pieces of found type, it’s a huge source of inspiration for me,” says Burrill. “Wherever I go I’ve always picked up tickets, scraps of type, newspaper clippings, odd packaging and anything that caught my eye that I thought could be useful for inspiration.”

The site was designed by Jon Bland (the chap behind projects including a book for Year 7 students). “I was chatting with Jon about collaborating on a potential printed book project drawing on my collection. I was keen to show it to fellow creatives and maybe help inspire them to look in unusual places for inspiration. Lots of the stuff I’ve collected is now over 20 years old, it’s got an interesting quality, there’s a pre-digital feel to the material. It’s from a time when things were still made by hand, I like the individuality of it,” says Burrill.

Jon adds: “The obvious choice for this project was printed matter, but when we started sifting through the many, many boxes of sketchbooks at Anthony’s studio it quickly became apparent that to edit any of this would be criminal.”

The designers worked together to sift through Burrill’s archives, and brought in Neal Fletcher to build the site. It launches with around 400 images, each captioned and tagged with keywords to help clarify the collection. According to Burrill, it’s hoped that the site could be open to external contributors in future. “I want it to grow into a useful online resource of an overlooked area of design,” he says.

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Anthony Burrill: Archive of Collected Ephemera & Printed Material

Above

Anthony Burrill: Archive of Collected Ephemera & Printed Material

Above

Anthony Burrill: Archive of Collected Ephemera & Printed Material

Above

Anthony Burrill: Archive of Collected Ephemera & Printed Material

Above

Anthony Burrill: Archive of Collected Ephemera & Printed Material

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About the Author

Emily Gosling

Emily joined It’s Nice That as Online Editor in the summer of 2014 after four years at Design Week. She is particularly interested in graphic design, branding and music. After working It's Nice That as both Online Editor and Deputy Editor, Emily left the company in 2016.

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