Kita is a high-end real estate developer. How high-end? Let’s just say that if you purchase the $25 million condo, they’ll throw in a Rolls Royce. The company aims to sell their properties before they’ve even broken ground, using a “look book” to showcase all their premium materials and designs. Needless to say, the book has to be a work of art. It is; it has a debossed linen cover, Swiss-bound, with 108 pages of photography using three different paper stocks: 80# Via Carnival Felt, 100# Sterling Matte Text, and 100# Via Vellum warm white.

Premier’s role in this major project earned us the “Best of Binding, Case” at the 2019 Pacific Printing Industries Association Printrocks! competition. As the output channel, our challenge was this: the book was a reprint of one that had been printed in Japan using a special gray Italian linen for the cover, but the tight timeline prevented sourcing the same material. Instead, we started with a Verona 601 white printable linen, and used the sophisticated software on our IS29 digital press to exactly emulate the original gray with our four-color process. What’s more, the book comes in a set of three, each in a different language, so we had to do three different production runs, and ensure that the color matched perfectly across each of the runs. 

Butter & Bacon love to eat, love to cook, and love to use spirits in their cooking. To share that love with the world, they decided to put out a recipe book. That was the easy part. Next came the design. Pam Johnson of Lake House Creative did a beautiful original watercolor for the cover, then photographed and scanned it to make it print-ready. The next question was how to bind the 160-page book in such a way that it would lie flat for easy reading while cooking, stand up to extensive use and abuse in the kitchen, and look good enough to leave out on the coffee table.  

They brought the challenge to us at Premier, and we went to work, trying several different options, presenting ideas to Butter & Bacon, until we got to a solution we all loved: a combination of case-bound hard-cover with a hidden wire-O binding. For such a high-end product, it’s typical to use offset printing, but with our digital IS29 UV inkjet press, we were able to achieve the quality our client expected, and win “Best of Binding, Comb, Spiral, Wire-O or Coil” at the 2019 Pacific Printing Industries Association Printrocks! competition.

Most design agencies are so busy promoting their own clients that they neglect to promote themselves. Not so for Brave New Day. With the help of Premier, they put in the overtime to create a beautiful 28-page booklet, and won “Best of Single Promotional Self-mailer” at the 2019 Pacific Printing Industries Association Printrocks! competition.

We printed the self-mailer on our Komori IS29, using Superfine Eggshell Text Forest Stewardship Council certified stock, with solid ink coverage that made the photos really pop. The horizontal layout is an imposing 10” x 14”, with foil stamping on the cover, and a zip strip closure. A standout feature is the solid vibrant turquoise colored three-quarter sheets that divide the booklet into sections, showing off the agency’s high-end branding and design projects.
 

To launch Constellation Brands’ new tequila brand, Mi Campo hired world-class design firm Sandstrom Partners to create a poster and brochure that would intoxicate even the most jaded influencer.

The poster is a creative marvel, and a technical one, too. The die-cut design was so detailed, it would have been impossible to achieve the desired quality by hand or with steel-rule equipment. Enter Premier. We took the vector artwork, applied it to a digital file, and fed it into our wide-format Zund rotary cutter. Voila! But there’s more: To hold up to the intricate cuts, the poster had to be printed on 24-point heavy card stock. Most presses can only take up to 16-point stock. But Premier’s four-color IS29 digital press handled it with ease.

The 64-page brochure was no less a triumph. We used two different inks and two different printer set-ups: four-color process UV ink to make sure the color photography held out and popped on the uncoated paper, and metallic gold ink to enhance the sheen. The cover was a coated sheet with gate folds on both the front and the back. And for the final touch of elegance and subtlety, Premier account director Justin Foeller suggested black saddle-stitch wire (instead of a standard silver staple) for the spine of the brochure. 

It was so popular with the influencers, Mi Campo asked us to do a second printing. And it was big hit at the 2019 Pacific Printing Industries Association Printrocks! competition, too, winning “Best of Posters, Art Prints, and Other Art Reproductions.”

This project was a classic collaboration with our client Univox Media and his go-to designer Lia Miternique. Univox (“one voice”) provides a unique service to media buyers, by consolidating audio, video, and digital options for advertisers to reach their target audiences. They wanted an entire identity and collateral package to showcase and differentiate their offerings, and brought their concept to Premier for recommendations of substrates and production processes.

Together we chose a newly released stipple-finish paper from Neenah for the presentation folder, which was designed as an oversized tri-fold, three-pocket folder, fastened with a Velcro dot. The covers and pockets are printed with a double-hit of spot gloss UV varnish. It’s also foil-stamped in two colors on our Brausse foil stamping machine and die-cut on our Heidelberg letterpress machines. Brochures for each of their three divisions were printed on our six-color UV press finished with soft-touch coating and silver metallic foil.

In other words, we pulled out all the stops — and won “Best of Presentation Folders/Portfolios and Binders” at the 2019 Pacific Printing Industries Association Printrocks! competition.

How do you make a coffee table book that looks like cork, and doubles as a coaster that can hold up to a sweaty beer glass? We’ll never tell. But we did it. And for our efforts, we were rewarded with two awards at the 2019 Pacific Printing Industries Association Printrocks! competition: “Best Use of Substrate” and  “Best of Binding, Perfect.”

The achievement was a result of our close collaboration with Bend, Oregon creative agency Flask and their client Crux Fermentation Project. They knew what they wanted, but didn’t know how to pull it off. And neither did the first suppliers they tried. But at Premier, we never say no. We did extensive research and testing to find a material that had the right look and feel, that would work with our printing processes, and that could be glued at the spine of the book.

Once we found the perfect cork material, we did a small run on our Indigo digital press, using matte black pigmented foil on the cover, and a silk substrate paper inside. The book has been so well received, we all look forward to Volume 2.

If you don’t have a chance to visit an Ann Sacks Tile showroom, to see and touch their exquisite hand-crafted designer tiles, their brand book serves to recreate the experience. Working with their design agency, CO Projects, Premier has created a tactile work of art in itself, with photography that faithfully captures the colors and luminosity of the products.

Premier Press has produced several ANN SACKS brand books, and last year we made the transition to uncoated stock; while still achieving excellent color holdout. For this edition’s cover, we used antique white foil on white stock for a clean, brilliant look.  

ANN SACKS wanted to make a few quick color corrections to accommodate for the uncoated substrates as they can be challenging. And this year, due to limited time, we were able to use our in-house services to meet the press schedule. The gurus in our new color correction/retouching studio have the expertise – and advantage; they know all the specifications of the presses, the paper, and the inks that would be used in printing. So they were able to tweak the 20 images quickly, perfectly.

Our account director, Justin Foeller, who had overseen the ANN SACKS printing projects in years before,  said this: “I was so proud to be able to offer my client the added value of color correction. Out of 20 images, only one needed to go back to be retouched. These guys are rock stars!” 

Thanks to CO Projects and ANN SACKS for allowing us to enhance the success of their beautiful brand book.  

TEDx Portland is not just a conference; it’s an experience. And thanks to their collaboration with Premier Press, it’s an experience that people can take with them, share, and revisit whenever they like.

All over the world, ten times a day, people attend TEDx talks, where they receive printed programs that they often throw away along with much of their memory of the event.

In Portland, it’s different. Here, they get a collector’s item: a hardbound, one-hundred-plus page keepsake, conceived by TEDx curator David Rae and his staff, designed by Enjoy the Weather, and printed by Premier Press.

This year marks the sixth annual book, and as always, our goal is to make it not only beautiful, but also thought-provoking, memory-evoking, and even useful. It includes spectacular photography; premium papers, inks, and bindings; updates on past years’ speakers; ample space for notes and autographs; and a perforated blank postcard, on which attendees can write a letter to their future selves, drop it off as they leave the event, and receive it in the mail next year.

It’s a labor of love and pride for all of us involved.

Ideas worth spreading. Books worth keeping.

The collaboration between Ann Sacks Tile, CO Projects branding and design agency, Mohawk fine papers, and Premier Press brings new meaning to the term “high-touch.” Get your hands on a copy of the new MADE by ANN SACKS brand book, and you’ll feel the love.

CO Projects has worked with Premier for years, so when it was time for a new ANN SACKS brand book, they looked to us again, this time with the opportunity to use a new paper stock and innovative printing techniques.

We all felt that an uncoated stock was the perfect surface to highlight the natural, tactile quality of the ceramic tiles shown in the book. We chose Mohawk Superfine for its smooth, hard finish, its ability to print photos in excellent detail, and the way it takes beautifully to the specialty processes we used.

The cover is crisply foil-stamped in silver, and deeply embossed with a tile pattern all the way through to the back of the sheet, opening to elegant exposed linen taped French binding. Inside are 78 pages of stunning photography, captured with richness and depth.

See the details in this video review by Sabine Lenz, or read the review on PaperSpecs.

Rebecca Cohen, Art Director and Partner at CO Projects, says, “The book had to reflect the high-end, luxury quality of our client’s products, and we knew that Premier was the partner we needed to pull it off. Shout out to the press operators at Premier; during our press checks, they were not only skilled professionals but also innovative problem-solvers throughout the process. And great people to work with.”

Thanks, Rebecca. It was a pleasure.

Premier Press crafted this workbook to showcase Ruffwear’s products with quality and eco-consciousness.

We printed on an uncoated, recycled-materials stock to embody Ruffwear’s commitment to the environment and ensure that each photo came out crisp and clear.

The final product is a 64-page, full-color workbook with three foldouts collated within the text pages. Premier combined each book with printed data sheets, price lists, and promo sheets before inserting them into matte mailers. Our data team then managed distribution and shipment of each package to Ruffwear dealers worldwide.