Lots of people send me nice stuff which uses interesting materials/finishing/processes (and hopefully some of our papers!). Sadly, I can't get to show these pieces of work to everyone ...so this is the best way to show others what people are up to. It's also my way of thanking those that I work with and take the time and trouble to send me lovely, interesting things.
justin@fennerpaper.co.uk
Showing posts with label Bespoke Paper Making. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bespoke Paper Making. Show all posts
Regular followers of this blog will know that my first post of every month is a "job from the past" so that I can show some of the really good work from years gone by.
Spring - Bespoke Watermarked Paper 2014
Originally from Australia, Skye Gyngell is now one of Britain’s most respected and acclaimed chefs. After initially training in Sydney and then Paris, Skye moved to work in London and after gaining experience and an increasing reputation, eventually took the role of head chef at Petersham Nurseries. It was there that she became renowned for her distinctively seasonal, elegant cooking. Skye opened her own restaurant 'Spring' in Somerset House in London in 2014.
Studio Frith based in London was commissioned to work on the restaurant identity. Frith Kerr, founder of Studio Frith is described by the New York Times as “the go-to graphic designer for creative clients” . The studio is renowned for its original work and exceptional clients including some of the world’s leading cultural institutions.
Fenner Paper was approached by Studio Frith about the possibility and practicality of producing watermarked paper for use as the menus for the new restaurant. Having explained the process of reproducing a design as a watermark and the producing a "mill making" of paper, the studio then asked me about the the possibility of not just one watermark but six different watermarks! ...a different one for each use, wine list, starters, deserts and cheese etc. Having costed the whole exercise with our paper mill partner, the go ahead was given for a mill making of over three tonnes of paper - approximately half a tonne each of six different watermarks.
The illustrated artworks were supplied as pdf's to the mill, where they have to be interpreted by the master craftsman who solders (by hand, using his eyes and experience) an electrotype die onto a skeletal "dandy roll" as you can see from the image below.
The below image shows the finished Dandy Roll
Watermarks are created during the early stages of paper manufacture using this "Dandy Roll" (the invention of the dandy roll is attributed to John Marshall from England in 1826) This skeletal roll made from a copper wire mesh, skims the top side of the paper on the machine at the point that the paper is still very wet. The image mark is pressed on the surface whilst also displacing the fibres causing areas of higher and lower density, this has the result that the image is apparent both on the surface and on looking through the sheet.
The picture above shows a Dandy Roll on a paper machine, just 'skimming the surface' and the picture below shows a close up of the mesh type nature of the skeletal Dandy Roll.
Studio Frith were kept informed throughout the whole process, including being sent photographs of the manufacturing process.
One of the hardest things for me to show in this article is the end result! Although I am sure that a professional photographer would be able to do a fantastic job, my limited facilities don't do justice to the end result, however, here are a couple of examples of the final product...
Click on images to enlarge
The paper was supplied as A4 sheets and is a 90gsm weight in a neutral white shade. As I mentioned earlier, in total there were six different watermarks, which I show below from the original pdf's I was sent.
It was an amazing project to have been involved with and it was great to work with a design studio and end client who had the creative vision to embark on such a project.
If you are interested, you can read more about the watermarking process here.
Regular followers of this blog will know that my first post of every month is a "job from the past" so that I can show some of the really good work from years gone by...
Boots Company Report and Accounts 1997
I was reminded about this project from twenty years ago as this project uses paper made at the Curtis Fine Paper, Guardbridge Paper Mill, which has since closed and now houses the Eden Mill brewery and distillery, which I wrote about below.
Up until the early 2000's the design and printing of company annual report and accounts was VERY big business. In the burgeoning design market of the 1980's and 90's There were many design companies which specialised in just annual reports (the likes of Michael Peter, Bamber Forsyth, Benjamin Rowntree, Radley Yeldar etc) and printers who would specialise in printing them such as Greenaway Harrison, Litho-Tech, Oakley Press, White Dove etc.
Back in those dim and distant days, it was very common for Annual Reports to be divided into the Report - printed on a white paper, printed in four colour process (with photographs!) and the Accounts section - printed on a coloured paper ...and this job follows that pattern.
This is the Report and Accounts for the Boots Company, the group of companies based on the Nottingham chemists founded in 1849 by John Boot. Back in 1997 they were a PLC in the FTSE 100, however ten years ago they were bought by a private equity firm based in Switzerland. The design is by Addison and the printer was Litho-Tech.
The size of the report is 297x180mm, portrait. It has a 4pp cover, which is printed in a blue and is matt laminated.
Below you can see the split between the two sections.
According to my notes, the 36pp front 'report' section was printed on Zanders Megamatt 150gsm, printed in CMYK, possibly with a special and a 'spot gloss machine varnish' which was a highly desirable effect back in those days.
The 44pp 'accounts' section is where I came in! I was briefed by Karen Blades, Production Manager at Addison to provide a bespoke paper to what was described as a 'post it note yellow' shade, which as you can see from the result below, we managed to achieve.
Click on images to enlarge
We decided to work with Curtis Fine Paper, who at the time had two paper mills in Scotland, one at Dalmore and one at Guardbridge, previously they were know as GB Paper. I sent the mill a sample of the colour and the received a couple of 'lab samples' made in the technical department at the mill. These were then forwarded to Addison and eventually to the end client for approval. I've written about what a mill making is here: https://justinsamazingworldatfennerpaper.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/what-is-mill-making.html
In this instance, the mill agreed to make a 2 tonne trial so a small group went to the mill to see the paper as it was being made. This was pretty unusual even in those days! ...so I visited the Guardbridge mill accompanied by Karen Blades from Addison and Derek Adnitt and Les Baker from Litho-Tech printers. As a result we were able to show the client EXACTLY the paper they were getting.
After that trial, Boots were shown the paper, it was approved and then the mill manufactured the remainder of the paper.
- and back in those days everything was done by fax and fortunately I still have the fax in my archive with the approval...
Click on images to enlarge
The printers called Litho-Tech were based in Kennington, London who at the time was one of the leading corporate printers in London if not the UK. Sadly like many printers of that era, the company no longer exists. It was printed offset litho. My notes aren't completely clear but I recall it was about 16 tonnes . Derek Adnitt was the sales director, Les Baker, the production manager and Paul Watson the Managing Director. Here are the credits which are in the back of the report.
Karen Blades now works at Print Source UK and still spends her time producing quality annual reports!
Regular followers of this blog will know that in the middle of the month, I publish a "What is ....? post. The article covers various aspects of paper, printing and finishing in greater depth. However, many of these subjects are complex, so these posts are only intended to be a brief introduction to the topic.
What is ...a "Mill making"?
Many of you may have heard the term "mill making" - often it is used by printers when talking about ordering paper and the context that a mill making is referred to is generally because a a certain quantity is needed or special size or weight is required which can also save money.
However I should explain that all paper is in fact made at a paper mill and therefore all paper is the result of a "mill making"! The two areas I shall cover is mill makings of standard products and mill makings of bespoke products.
Firstly I'll just give a brief introduction to paper making.
Twin wire paper machine
The manufacturing of paper is a mechanical process and is ”heavy industry”. The site of a paper mill covers many hectares and the machines themselves are housed in buildings the size of aircraft hangers. With the exception of mills making specialist material (such as artists papers) paper mills manufacture tonnes of papers per day. Typically a small mill might make 50 to 100 tonnes per day with larger mills making over 1000 tonnes per day. A paper machine is very large, typically 4 metres wide and over 100 metres long.
Bales of pulp on conveyor
Pulp being mixed in hyropulper
Bales of refined pulp are tipped into a ‘Hydropulper’ which breaks the pulp up by adding huge amounts of water and movement. After several more refining stages the ‘stock’, now 99% water and 1% fibre, is pumped to the start of the paper machine called the Headbox. The stock is sprayed onto a fast moving mesh which due to gravity allows most of the water to fall through the mesh. The remaining fibres are ‘matted’ together on the mesh forming a knitted ‘web’ of interlocked fibres (if you tear a sheet of paper you can generally see the fibres). The web of paper which is still about 60% moisture passes through the press section which compacts the fibres and removes more moisture before entering the drying section which finally reduces moisture by use of steam heated drying cylinders.
The web is then wound into large rolls at the end of the machine which can weigh anywhere between 10 and 50 tonnes. The large rolls are then slit into smaller rolls which can either be used for printing on the roll or cut into sheets.
It is useful to have an appreciation of the manufacturing process as explained above as it can be hard to identify with this industrial procedure in the ‘digital’ world in which we live today.
Many paper mills, especially the larger ones, manufacture a very limited range of products. In the most extreme case, just one product. The mill I visited many years ago at Mogi Guaçu in Brazil basically just made one product with minor variations - and that mill made 1000 tonnes a day! and produced 365 days a year - that's right, 365,000 tonnes per annum! Today that would not be regarded as a big mill.
In the case of these mills which manufacture few products, a mill will usually customise making to a special size (and sometimes a special weight) and that basically is about it! So why is this useful? Well, here are a couple of examples:
Example 1: The project you are designing for requires 50,000 sheets of 150gsm, SRA1 (640x900mm), but the paper you have selected only comes in 720x1020mm (B1). The stock (in B1) weighs 5510kgs. If you were able to get a mill making in SRA1 it would weigh 4320kgs, thereby saving over 1 tonne of paper! All paper products are sold by weight so this would represent a considerable saving.
Example 2: The project you are designing has a tight budget. You want to use a 170gsm paper but it is too much for the budget. The next standard weight down is 150gsm which you consider too light. The project requires 250,000 sheets of SRA1 paper. That quantity of 170gsm weighs 24.4 tonnes. If you had 160gsm (non standard weight) made for you as a "mill making" it weighs 23 tonnes saving 1.4 tonnes of paper. Good for the budget and the environment.
Measuring Thickness in Microns
One thing that does need to be highlighted is that paper manufacturing is a continuous, industrial process. A paper machine is not something that can be simply turned on and off and does not work to precise (or digital) type accuracy. As a result all products are made within "manufacturing tolerances". These tolerances cover everything! from variations in shade, surface, moisture, weight, size, thickness and quantity etc.
A scale that measures the weight of paper.
For example the weight tolerance for papers is plus or minus 5%, therefore if you ordered a paper that was 150gsm, it could be made as high as 157gsm or as low as 142gsm. BUT REMEMBER THE TARGET IS 150gsm! It must be understood and appreciated that all manufactured products, be it steel, glass, plastic etc. are all manufactured to such tolerances.
Special note: Problems often occur when a product is made and is at one end of a tolerance and then a subsequent making is at the opposite spectrum i.e. The EXTREMES of the tolerance. Following the example given above, if you received your 150gsm paper and it was actually 157gsm, you would accept and judge the feel of the paper on what you had received. If some time later, you received another making of 150gsm which measured 142gsm you would quite rightly complain as the difference would be marked. However now this has been explained, I hope you can see the logic - although it is hard to appreciate at the time when there is a situation where you have never come across the issue of manufacturing tolerances before.
Quantity tolerance. As I mentioned above, a paper machine is not something that can be simply turned on and off and does not work to precise quantity. As a result all orders are made to a quantity "manufacturing tolerance". This means that when you order a quantity of paper, there is an allowance for it to be so many % over or under the ordered quantity, so this needs to be taken into account when ordering. Example: If you order 5 tonnes of 720x1020mm 135gsm that is a dead quantity of 50,000 sheets but if the tolerance is +/- 5% (for example) you would get up to 53,000 or as few as 47,500 sheets. This means you need to allow enough money to pay for the 53,000 sheets and make contingency in case the making comes up 2500 sheets short!
Mill makings of Bespoke products.
Firstly it is important to realise that to have a paper made to your own specification is a question of commitment.
As mentioned earlier, a paper mill is a large manufacturing plant. The minimum quantity required to order a bespoke paper will depend on the size of paper mill/machine and type/quality of paper to be made. It is unlikely that a paper mill will make less than 1000kilos (1 tonne) of paper and many mills will have minimum quantities of 5 tonnes, 10 tonnes or more.
There is relatively little in papermaking that has not been made before! Therefore creating your own paper around an existing specification by "tweaking" it will ensure that you get the paper that you want. It also gives the client the opportunity of looking at previously made papers which are close to the specification to be ordered thereby giving a certain degree of confidence that what the client is ordering can be produced correctly! One of the biggest stumbling blocks to ordering a bespoke paper is that it isn’t possible to see an exact sample before ordering. Generally a client can be shown samples on which placing an order depends. If there is a bespoke shade, a laboratory sample (about 5cm square) made using pulp and dies is produced, if there is a texture, a previous sample can be shown and smoothness/roughness can also be demonstrated by previous examples.
Building a specification: There are many things that can be specified, although if you just want a paper in a certain shade and weight, it might be a fairly basic specification.
Common things to be specified are the shade, substance (gsm), caliper (thickness), grain direction, texture, smoothness, porosity, opacity, strength (burst) plus other criteria such as recycled/FSC content and whether inclusions and fibres are to be added etc. Other considerations are the end use, how it is being printed, sheet size etc..
Sample representation: The laboratory sample plus texture, weight samples etc. are representations of the way your paper will look and is the closest thing that the mill can supply as a ‘proof’, without making the actual paper. If you watch the video about CRUSH (above) it shows a paper sample being made in the lab.
An order can only be processed on the basis that the customer is happy with this representation but it must also be noted that paper is mechanical process made using natural fibres and water, therefore it a curious mix of skill, art and science and can never be exact.
Sample Approval: If you approve the sample/representation, you will be required to agree to the samples supplied and the order will be placed on that basis.
...and now for the advert!
Fenner Paper has over 30 years experience in dealing with bespoke manufactured papers for Annual Reports, specialist packaging (luxury boxes), and other items such as security papers, watermark papers and even ammunition paper! We work with you to build the specification for the required material and select the right manufacturer to work with ...if you want to give it a try, just get in touch!
Tall, lanky and with glasses is how most people whom I have met might describe me. Hopefully they'll also remember that I'm enthusiastic about what I do. I've been working in the paper industry for many years, so people seem to think that I know quite a bit (I would also point out that I've also forgotten a lot!). My occupation is actually a "Paper Merchant" (it says that on my Marriage Certificate!) and I am the Marketing Director at Fenner Paper. We specialise in finding the materials and paper solutions for graphic designers that are producing printed work. I also work closely with "creative" printers - although there are only a few of them anyway! (I shan't name names!). Fenner Paper is only a relatively small company although we handle some large projects and we have quite a high profile. So the business that we do is handled on a personal level - and hopefully that is demonstrated in this blog - read and enjoy!
My address is
Fenner Paper Company Ltd
15 Orchard Business Centre
Sanderson Way,
Tonbridge, Kent TN9 1QF
Tel: 01732 771100
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