Consumables-Paper - Offset

The love for design and typography is clearly evident in this destination wedding invitation, which also serves as a tourist guide with maps, a cut-out bib, and tourist destinations of the host city, Chattanooga, TN.

Printing firm Digital Color Concepts (DCC) in Mountainside, NJ, in collaboration with New York City creative agency OTTO NY, and a cast of photographers and street artists, celebrate the power of visual communication in a revealing tour of New York City after dark—or "the other New York" as they came to call it.

Unbeknownst to advertisers, Time Inc. has been quietly switching from the traditional glossy stock to a cheaper grade, known as supercalendered plus, or SC.

Paper industry sources said that Time Inc. began buying up the thinner stock at the start of the year and had eased it into Time, Entertainment Weekly and Fortune by the second quarter.

Time Inc. is taking it slow, especially with flagship People. As one source said, “Readers generally don’t know the difference, but advertisers do.”

Based on information from unnamed “paper industry sources,” the New York Post reported that Time Inc. is saving “at least $10 million a year” by switching from CGW to “razor-thin” SCA in its weekly magazines, “unbeknownst to advertisers.” You don’t suppose any of those sources were from companies that make coated paper, do you?

Color reproduction isn’t as good on SCA, and “bleed through” is worse because the paper is thinner, the tabloid quoted the sources as saying.

My fellow paper geeks will recognize the over-generalizations here: For example, color reproduction isn’t always inferior on SCA, and a thin paper doesn’t necessarily

Everyone needs to recognize that the paper industry isn't simply 8½x11 copy paper. Think medical supplies. Microwave popcorn bags. Food packaging. Receipts at gas pumps and restaurants. Lottery tickets. Beer and wine labels. Toilet tissue, paper towels and napkins. Cardboard boxes. Gift-wrapping paper.

These are some of the paper products of Wisconsin. No computer, iPad, tablet, smartphone or other technology can take their place. And rest assured that the paper industry in Wisconsin will be here to make them.

This piece, designed by Faust Associates in Riverside, IL, and printed by Rider Dickerson in Chicago, features an unusual hand-folded format—a seemingly simple 12x12" opens up to a flat 24x36" in a way that resembles the edges of an oyster shell.

French Paper, in Niles, MI, supplies corporate customers, as well as independent designers who use the company's array of styles and colors for packaging, envelopes, books and posters that pop with personality and sophistication.

Allegiance to the French Paper brand is such that artists driving through northern Indiana or southwest Michigan have exited the interstate just to see the mill along the St. Joseph River, south of downtown Niles.

Jerry French, the company's president and great-great-grandson of founder Joseph W. French, said many design firms are small and begin as family-owned businesses. He believes that helps them identify with French Paper.

What better motif for a destination wedding in Puerto Rico could there be than a boarding pass? That's what designer A Day in May of Traverse City, MI, had in mind when creating this clever, yet sophisticated save-the-date piece.

Earlier this week, I came across a paper merchant’s Website (I will not mention any names here, and I’m sure they’re not the only ones) and was dumbfounded. They proudly show their visitors the American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA) brightness chart, claiming that brightness equals paper grade.

Mohawk Fine Papers is embracing the technology often blamed for reducing demand for paper. Mohawk is buying smaller companies and making other investments to tailor new products to digital printing.

In dollar terms: Mohawk paper sells at an average of $2,500 a ton. The company can charge four times as much for the same amount of a digital-ready material (synthetics such as vinyl or polyester, which Mohawk coats, enabling its customers to print on it).