​SILK PEARCE

Peter Silk and Jack Pearce met whilst studying graphic design at The Royal College of Art and after several years of working in various design companies came together in 1984 to form Silk Pearce. The design group quickly gained a reputation for well-crafted ideas-based design underpinned by a feel for the subject matter. Their simple mantra of ‘designing things that people like’ has stood the test of time, and has drawn many to their doors including many arts organisations, not to mention the publishers of this book.

 

Silk Pearce’s Creative Director, Rob Steer has taken the leading role in the design of The Grit book and has been at pains to project the character of the project, and indeed the community that it represents, becoming immersed in the subject as a whole and familiar with its stories and images.

 

"The strong use of black and gold used frequently on the sign-written nameplates of the fishing boats has been borrowed and is used throughout this book with no other colour. The illustrations are deliberately taken direct from the sketchbook in which they were drawn with no adornment, and in a departure from the modern inclination to retouch scratches or creases from photographs we have approached things differently, treating old photographs as precious artefacts, preserving their ‘wrinkles’, dog-eared corners and even some of Jack Rose’s handwriting. The result, we believe, is an authentic record of The Grit as a living place and a thriving community, the echoes of which are preserved well beyond these pages."