Smells like Fresh Print — Black, Obviously.
Brought to you by B&F Papers, the Smells Like Fresh Print series celebrates the beauty and tactile qualities of recently created, selected print projects. In this installment we share a project which profiles papers potential to meet all a designers dark desires!
This piece is an embellished desktop art calendar combined with a visual guessing game. The name ‘Black, obviously’, alludes to the fact that all the subjects printed on the cards are not only black, but also obvious once you see what they are depicting.
Client: B&F Papers
Designer: Strategy Creative is an international award winning, design-led advertising agency with studios in New Zealand, Australia and Japan.
The Wellington team was in charge of this project and were given the brief to showcase the variety of black paper options that are available within our range, and demonstrate the creative production techniques that can be employed to use it.
Project details: With the progress in digital press technology, the possibilities for printing on dark and coloured stocks is far greater than it has ever been. People have tended to just flood-coat white paper to get a ‘white on black’ design until now because white ink printing has been limiting.
We now have the option of dry-toner and liquid ink digital presses using white and clear inks. We also have digital raised ink options. Traditional finishing techniques such as letterpress, foiling and blind embossing have also been great ways to use black stocks. So the idea was to demonstrate to Printers, Designers and Print Finishers, what is possible with black stocks and to think beyond using white paper.
We have added to our suite of black stocks with two new lines.
- Pop’Set 80/120/170/240/320/400
- Curious Matter 270/380
- Curious Skin 270/380
- *(new) Curious Metal 120/250/300
- *(new) Keaykolour Original 120/300/450
This was a unique opportunity for us to display our black range by Arjowiggins at the same as giving our customers a new and refreshed gift of a calendar, albeit a very different offering from the traditional.
The concept is based around all things black. Cleverly designed graphics that portray various common black objects/sayings which are subtle enough that the viewer needs to think about it for a while. The whole lot is summed up on ‘The Black List’ in December.
Printers:
- Logick (Ricoh, offset, foiling, embossing)
- Fuzed (Scodix and Xerox)
- Knife design: Guillotine Ltd
Production methods:
- Gold, Black and White Foiling
- Die cutting
- Overglossing
- CMYK
- Blind Embossing