May 16th, 2007
A small dig at web process and smelling paper
For the past week, I’ve been designing the printed material for a certain conference. I often forget the mixed emotions that come with switching medium and designing for print again. On one hand, it’s great not to have to think about IA, usability and CSS bugs and to focus on just creating something nice and smelling paper (we’ll get on to that). On the other hand though, especially when designing to a specific deadline which can’t shift, the feeling of finality that comes with print still scares the shit out of me. If it’s wrong, that’s it.
A small dig at web process
Maybe it’s me, but when I’m designing for print—especially when I’m preparing artwork—I take immense care to not screw things up. Because once it’s at the printers, then there’s no going back. With the web, the act of finalising work before completion is actually only imposed by process and not by the physical act of uploading something. If you upload something and it’s not right, you redo it and upload again. Can’t do that with a 20k run of annual reports.
This bothers me.
So, note to self, get in the same mental space for the final production work for web design as you do for print. Probably easier said than done.
Feeling and smelling paper
I like this bit of print design. My wife still laughs at me whenever we’re out and I go fondling and smelling paper stock in Waterstones. This week, I’ve had a great time speaking with my printer and sourcing a really great stock for the conference material. This involves looking, feeling and smelling. Choosing the right stock is such a sensual experience (note. I’m using that word in its correct context there. Choosing paper is definitely not sexual. Well, for me anyway.) Also, having just gone into business myself, I don’t have the stash of paper samples I’ve had access to in the past when I worked in agencies. So, I’ve been on a dreadful looking site paperandprint.com, who have an incredibly useful list of mills, brands and products. I began the task of compiling my own paper collection.
I was amazed at how varied the industries websites were. What was surprising was that all of them, except one, made ordering swatches and samples incredibly frustrating. After about an hour, I gave up on most and picked the phone up. I don’t get it, how is this difficult? Like I said, there was one site that really stood out as a visual, interesting way of ordering samples. That was Zanders Samples.
Zanders, a joy to order
First off, before I go on about how great this was, ignore the fact the code is shonky. Okay? Good.
Most of the online sample ordering services I came across were simple shopping cart type functionality. For the most part, they worked well, but considering the breadth of most product ranges (in terms of size, colour, weight etc.), and the choices I had to make before ordering, the simple shopping cart soon became a monstrous list of links. Then I stumbled across the Zanders UK samples site.
Very simple, task driven presentation. Do you want samples? Or other stuff?
The homepage is so simple; do you want samples (tailored to order of course), or generic product swatches and promotional material.
On clicking samples, you are treated to some wonderfully simple illustrations to guide you through the process.
1. Choose what type of sample you want. 2. Pick a product. 3. Pick a product type and 4. Here’s what you ordered.
A really fresh take on a labourious process.
Know where I can get more swatches?
Years ago, when I was a full-time print designer, swatches and paper samples seemed to be easier to come by. Bigger mills, such as Modo, where pretty much throwing bulky swatches at any newly graduated designer. Oh how times of change. I really couldn’t believe how difficult it was to track these down this week. Anyway, I’m getting there, slowly. On that note, does anyone know of any good mills or distributors who’d be happy to send me a decent range of paper swatches?
GF Smith have a great range and really helpful sample/swatch service… it’s high-quality, high-end, expensive stuff. Arctic Paper’s range is more subtle and workman-like, but they’ve got some tidy products, and are very cost-effective.
You’re right Simon, CF Smith are super helpful. One master swatch winging its way to me as we speak. Brilliant, thanks.
GF Smith have always been the most designer-friendly of manufacturers/merchants. But their excellent products come at a price, so they won’t be suitable for all purposes. Another very helpful manufacturer is Curtis Fine Papers http://www.curtisfinepapers.com/
But you’re right about the websites — I think it’s a symptom of the mind-shift between print and web delivery that can, for some, be hard to achieve.
In the past I’ve found Robert Horne helpful with their large sheet samples. Not feeling the flavour of their website though, I’m sure you’ll be picking up the phone rather than ploughing through that!
I’ve also found that Curtis Fine Papers are very good for samples. They even have a link in their main menu bar for it. They sent me out some samples, of their excellent paper nice and quickly. I rather like their semi-transparent one…
Fortunately for me, a large paper distributor has a warehouse complete with a very robust sample department that’s 10 minutes from my office and home. It’s owned and operated by RIS papers, but they stock everything (French, Finch, Mohawk, etc.), so if I need a sample sheet I jsut call them up and they’ll have it ready for me or UPS it. If they don’t have it in stock they’ll contact the mill for me and have it here the next day. It’s all free, too, as long as I specify to my printer that they order the paper for my job from this particular distributor.
So, if you have a distributor in yout area, and and city should have a few, see what sort of sample process they have set up. It might be smart to start with your printer(s) and ask them for some contact info from a distributor in the area and use that as your “in” to the sample department.
…of course, I’m in the States so I don’t know if distribution is handled a little differently. At any rate, yeah, going through paper companies’ web sites is frustrating and I usually never get what I ask for. I’m also a guilty paper sniffer. I love the smell of a toothy opaque. mmmm.
Drew Kora: Mmmm, toothy opaques.
It turns out speaking on the phone with local distributors is the way to go. I have a bunch of samples which should be with at the end of this week. Right, I’d better stop this now or The Wife will be having words I’m sure.
I don’t do much print design, but the last time I had to pick paper stock, I was producing my own wedding invites and paper was really important to me. I simply drove down to xpedx and browsed around, it’s basicly a big retail outlet for all kinds of paper, some of which are pretty nice.
What’s the advantage to ordering swatches as opposed to just browsing in a store like xpedx?
When I worked at a graphic design firm, I was also awash in paper samples and swatch books, but I no longer do enough print work to for a paper rep spend time trying to win my business. So nowadays I generally get my paper samples and swatch books from the printer, usually when I’m asking for quotes on a job.
Hi Mark, if you’ve got a good printer then they should put you in the right direction of paper samples to use and from past experience are only too happy to send you these as their offices are literally littered with them. In Cardiff there are 2 companies I’d recommend mwl(dotcodotuk) and hartleywilprint(dotcodotuk), both are extremely helpful.
If however, you wanted to take a moral stance and think about the environmental impact your printed items had then look no further than the way Howies(dotcodotuk) created and continue to create their catalogues. The paper is manufactured from sustainable forests and the printer they use Beaconpress(dotcodotuk) uses energy from windpower and are apparently the first carbon neutral printers in the world.
Also nice papers to think about I’ve come across are:
Munken — arcticpaper(dotcom)
Hello — roberthorne(dotcodotuk)
Conqueror — conqueror(dotcom)
Hi Mark.
I’m with you on the smelling and stroking paper. I have a great swatch sample that is a couple of years old now. The range is The Curious Collection from ArjoWiggins, in particular, The Curious Touch series. There’s a great one called Soft Milk. After stroking it for days on end, I was even considering setting up a company based around the ‘idea’ of a bit of paper that felt this way… my fiance thought I’d gone mad. Maybe I am. Anyway, just thought I’d let you know that you’re not the only paper pervert. You can get some great papers from ArjoWiggins here: http://www.paperpoint.com although this is a laborious process.
“So, note to self, get in the same mental space for the final production work for web design as you do for print. Probably easier said than done.”
I’m quite surprised there’s not more people commenting on this interesting statement! Granted, it’s a “small dig” but still ;-)
I’ve often wondered about this (having also made the medium switch and feel like opening a box from the printer is like reverse Christmas). I’ve tried putting practising this ^, but I’m not sure it’s all that positive of an experience.
While print may put the pressure on our work ethic, the strict conventions and schedule often don’t allow for those wonderfully creative moments that I often only get with web design (these days). The iterative and flexible ‘web mindset’ seems to have more room for this…
Like Mark and many others here I too was involved more in print in bygone times and am now mostly into web related projects, so I can empathize with the feelings of shifting back to print.
Still, you’re right, smelling and fondling paper is essential and really goes to highlight the differences of experience in working in the two mediums … no really Mrs. Boulton, it’s not what you think.
I completely agree! At the moment the only print work I do is a quarterly corporate newsletter, and as the date of submition and production nears there is this growing sense of dread that the client is some how going to sign-off on a copy with the company name misspelt on the front page or something similar.
Maybe print and web need to be looked at as two completely different animals rather than simply two types of design production. Print behaves more like a product launch, and web behaves more like a forever improving software product. You have alphas and betas and ongoing versions.
But maybe we occasional print designers are a little too hard on ourselves. After all, if GM can recall hundreds of thousands of cars back from the real world to solve the minor issue of exploding petrol tanks or whatever, what’s a little recall to reattach the CEO’s mistakenly decappitated head on the profile page of 20k annual reports right? … right?
I let a typo slip by in an annual report once. It was for a university and the word “education” was spelled wrong. Ha!! The book was proofed by many eyes, but at the end of the day my eyes were the last to see it. I fudged up.
…oh well. I didn’t lose my job. Since then I’ve learned to follow a very stringent set of guidelines for proofing with a complete paper trail of signatures and everything. It minimizes errors and also spreads out the responsibility if/when errors occur.
At any rate, I totally agree with the topic of this thread. I work primarily in print and when I switch to web I totally am less cautious with little errors. I mean, I literally slip into a “oh well I can fix it later mode” that I would never ever adopt in a print project. I guess I never thought that it could hurt the final product or be a detriment to my creative process.
hm, paper collection?! I should do something like that, very nice experience… and my clients would be even more happy :)
I like this bit of print design.
Very good informations with a good usability, I learned a lot, thanks.
Great article. I certainly do break into a sweat when getting stuff back from the printers. There is always the fear that there is something you have missed in the proof. Especially if time is tight on a project.
I have not used Zanders yet, although I have been impressed by the samples that they have been sending me for the past year or so. Their site is great, not visited it before.
Btw. just heard your presentation at this years SXSW, you sound like a top bloke, always good to put a voice to a face :)
Lee
Interesting post, I can’t help being reminded of the countless times which I have picked up something at the printers and just thinking “okay, can’t change anything now.”
Websites do lack that concrete feeling to them, and always seem to be a work in progress.
I was intrigued, as well, by this:
I’m continually reminding my clients that the Web is not print and that the perfection they expect from a printed documentis not possible (and not desirable) on the Web.
Not that standards don’t matter or that quality isn’t important. They do and it is. But my monitor is different from yours and my browser chokes where yours doesn’t. And, despite all I do, at the end of the day, I cannot control those factors. And that’s okay.
For me, the differences between print and the Web is akin to the differences between broadcast and newspaper, between live music and a performance recorded on CD.
There is something vital and just a little “messy” about the Web — “messy” in a creative sense.
In my previous life, before Web design, I was a journalist who chose radio over print. You could still yell “Stop the presses!” in radio (“This just in.…”) and change everything. You can do that on the Web, too.
Thanks for an interesting article, Mark.
and see… in print, I’d be stuck with the errors in my post forever — oh, wait! I am stuck — I can’t edit the comment! So I can’t add a space between “document\” and “is” and I can’t fix the grammar when I decided to write\“differences” instead of “difference” and forgot to change from “is” to “are”. I don’t know, but maybe that makes this an even better illustration… or not.
I never designed for print till now, I’m recently discovering this new world.. it’s really different. I was really pleased to visit this blog for the first time.. I’ll come back! ;-)
Nice design you make. May others test it for bugs. This is right choice