Title: Maine Recycled promotion
Agency: Thursday Design
Client: K.W.Doggett Fine Paper
Stocks: Maine Recycled – Gloss / Maine Recycled – Silk / Maine Recycled Digital – Gloss / Maine Recycled Digital – Silk
Printed by: Southern Colour (NSW). Carbon8 (NSW) – digitally printed postcards.
Albert Einstein once said: “Life is like riding a bicycle, in order to keep your balance, you must keep moving.” Wise words from a very wise soul but why on Earth are we talking about bicycles when we’ve just launched a paper promotion?! The quote is reflective of the unexpected and surprising element to our printed promotion – our beautiful Maine Recycled bike. Yep, we restored an old Speedwell frame into a modern classic. It’s a real beauty. What’s old is new again.
Thursday Design in Sydney are the creatives behind this project which they built based on the single minded proposition ‘Maine Recycled highlights the beauty of the world’. The photographic essay/brochure is called ‘A beautiful journey’. It’s printed CMYK on a Heidelberg Speedmaster CD102-6 with dry gloss varnishes (dust jacket Silk 130gsm, cover Silk 300gsm, text Silk 150gsm). The other parts include an offset postcard (Gloss 350gsm), two digital postcards (Gloss 350gsm and Silk 350gsm) and an A1 poster (Silk 200gsm). We chose to print the postcards in offset and digital form because we often get asked how an image looks in comparison so we reproduced the shot of the bike on the grass using an offset press and an HP Indigo 5500 press (we’ve included the printing specs on the back for handy reference).
Craig Johns, Creative Director at Thursday Design sums it up perfectly: “A decision to restore (or recycle) a once beautiful bicycle, seemed to be the perfect metaphor for the brand. Commissioning a beautifully shot photographic essay of a once great bike being restored reinforces the key brand message.” And we think it cleverly conveys a neat little environmental story too!
Maine Recycled is an A2+ coated paper available in gloss and silk and suitable for offset and digital printing. It’s made with an amazing 60% FSC® certified post consumer waste fibre and 40% FSC® certified virgin fibre, and is even certified carbon neutral from cradle to printer. The pulp is produced at Greenfield Mill in France, Europe’s number one producer of recycled pulp. In comes the waste (mainly sorted office waste), and out comes a shiny new generation, bright white sheet. There’s literally so much pulp you could fill thousands of velodromes! We’re pretty proud of this sheet and the fact that it has one of the highest recycled contents going around among the coated papers.
It took hours to find the right frame. The Speedwell road racer was discovered in unrideable condition, unloved and uncared for. Many more hours were spent finding the right person to rebuild the bike. Saran Langdon from Stallion Bikes in Redfern was chosen and she lovingly restored the frame via an incredibly detailed process. Her brief was to keep as much of the original bike as possible. Some gorgeous new bits like the classic seat and saddlebag from English company Brooks, brake callipers from Tektro and Soma vintage style light set, made our bike a true beauty. Speedwell frames were made in the late 1950s and early 1970s by a bike manufacturer in the same suburb as Stallion Bikes! There was also an unexpected challenge of completing the bike build before Sarah went on maternity leave (her partner was due to give birth the same week of the bike restoration). Pressure much?
The gorgeous cover illustration is designed by Christoper Nielsen who you may have seen on The Design Files and who is well known around the traps for producing some colourful and exciting vintage inspired illustrations. He recently unveiled the creative process he undertook to produce the ‘Maine girl’ and it’s definitely worth a read.
So there you have it friends. Maine Recycled is a great on press performer and has a sweet environmental story which we hope you like as much as we do. Please speak to your paper specialist or account manager for more information. A copy of the promotion should be coming your way as we speak.
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