GF Smith

GF Smith is probably Fedrigoni's closest competition. They produce a range of specialist papers, as do Fedrigoni, working closely with graphics designers to promote their paper range. I think GF Smith have got their promotion of their products bang on! Each piece of design truly highlights the strength of each paper and utilities the unique qualities of each. This is exactly what I want to achieve with the Fedrigoni paper range; I want it to become a demonstration of how the papers can be used to their advantage.

Gf Smith's Colorplan is probably the equivalent to Fedrigoni's Imaginative Colours.

They even offer you the chance to buy the designs seen on the promotional material at the GF Smith Editions...

This has made me think that we need to focus on something with a strong focus of colour within it, then consider how this can be transferred onto our designs in order to promote Fedrigoni.

September Industry designed a lot of the work for them, this is what they had to say about it....

GF Smith — Print Test: Digital paper promotion
Over the course of the last 15 years digital technology has been quietly revolutionising the print industry. Yet the limited potential of early digital equipment to handle a variety of quality papers hasn’t always lived up to a paper specifiers expectations. Recent advances have seen new digital presses handle a huge variety of textures, colours, recycled papers and non-paper-based substrates.
GF Smith approached us to create a Digital paper promotion to showcase their expansive portfolio of digital papers, as well as, the technological potential of the latest digital presses.
Without the restrictions posed by plates on lithographic machines, one of the most exciting possibilities offered by digital print technology is ‘personalisation’ or ‘variable imaging’ — allowing for unique prints to be produced from an established document framework. With that in mind we worked with digital artists FIELD to create a series of 10,000 unique abstract digital illustrations, drawing inspiration from the micro details of paper fibres.
Generative processes combined code with pre-determined colour palettes. The vibrance, colour and shapes of the resulting illustrations were caught in the dynamic digital print medium. Each highly detailed image shows a glimpse of the digital sculpture – but it’s entirety remains hidden.
We worked closely with Pure Print to produce all the elements of the swatch. Each sleeve was composed using an RGB variable data publishing workflow; a fusion of a 10,000 record CSV database, our Indesign layout and FIELD’s stream of unique digital illustrations. To reproduce each illustration’s on-screen vibrancy and saturation, the files were directed to a high-performance Production Pro RIP which converted each illustration from sRGB to a press profiled CMYK colour space. The final sheets were printed on Naturalis Absolute White Smooth 330gsm in CMYK from two HP Indigo 7500 digital presses, printing a classic 175 screen.
Samples
We worked with four different digital print suppliers to produce the samples folder, each printer specialising in a different digital print technology and techniques.
This week’s edition of SI is going to be a week of exclusives and to start things off the right way (before Friday comes along – you know what that usually means) we have some brand new work designed by SEA for GF Smith one of Europe’s leading paper specialists.
Now some of you may have already laid eyes upon the visually striking Print Test project – a collaboration between SEA and FIELD. But many of you have probably never seen the GF Smith: Master Specifier – a project that has been in development for over a year – and it gives me great pleasure to share these high-res images with you all before this handsome swatch book lands on every designers desk around the country!