Signature Media needed a leave-behind for their sales team that would demonstrate their large-press capabilities while establishing their new brand. The solution was to create a calendar journal that sales contacts could keep and use in their daily lives – something truly utilitarian.
A large press shop like Signature Media has a lot of capabilities to show off to it’s customers and prospective clients. Capabilities like:
- Advanced Offset Press Techniques
- Metallic Inks
- Strike-through UV Coating
- Printing on plastics
- Variable-data print
- Bindery
- Creative and integrated marketing abilities
Here is the final product:
Cover:
The demonstrates several things: First, there is an overlay of printed plastic (shown below) that serves to protect the cover. The overlay is printed in six colors (CMYK, Metallic Silver and Opaque White). Second, the cover itself is a 5-color process combining CMYK with Metallic Silver to create a realistic, shimmering metallic effect within the image of gears. Last, the cover was overprinted on an HP Indigo 3050 with a variable data list of names (my name is shown here).
Plastic Cover Overlay:
Inside Cover:
The inside of the cover demonstrates Signature’s superior ink coverage as well as their Strike-through UV Coating technique. The silvery stripe through the center is a dull varnish with a touch of silver added. The logo and black areas are glossy UV.
Month Intro:
Each month features an introductory graphic. Many of these graphics demonstrate Signature’s advanced printing techniques. This example demonstrates metallic effects. All month pages are printed on bond paper so the user can easily write in important dates.
Week View:
The week views are printed on bond paper so the user can easily write in important appointments. There is also a year-at-a-glance on each week view page.
Notes:
The end of the journal features notes pages with the year-at-a-glance. The back side of the notes pages feature appointments, to-do list and 0.25″ graph paper. These notes pages were printed 4/1 (CMYK over Cyan) on bond paper for easy writing and are perforated for easy, clean tear-out.
Selected Months:
April’s intro page uses metallic effects to bring the press image to life.
Metallic effects are again used in the May intoduction. The image of lead letterpress type really jumps off the page.
June uses Metallic effects to make the image of ink cans and trowell very realistic
The introduction to October features Strike-through UV Coating to create a spooky handprint on the page. This is achieved by overprinting solid rich black with a glossy handprint image. The result is a wet-looking handprint on solid black.
The mailbox image in the December intro page uses the metallic effects technique to make the mailbox metal uncannily realistic. Reach in and grab that holiday card from Grandma!
This project was a lot of fun to work on. A special thanks is owed to Tess Regan for her help typsetting dates and inputting holidays.
I realize that the images here leave a bit to be desired. They were taken with my iPhone’s built-in camera. I hope to photograph this piece again with better equipment in the near future.
-Kent