GF Smith are a company who supply quality paper to publishers and design houses across the UK and Europe. With their reputation as the leading paper supplier in the country they had a lot to live up to. But as you can imagine, I was finding it difficult to get excited about paper.
The reps from GF Smith began by displaying a portfolio with a range of colours, weights and finishes. They had standard papers with a course finish to card that a had a transparent super gloss that looked like paper. Having seen such a range of stock, it made me want to find an application for them and I was inspired to find a use for them. I particularly liked a piece of card that was die cut with lots of very small hole in order to turn it almost into a mesh.
They also offer embossing and watermarking services which looked really good on business related articles such as compliment slips and business cards. They had a few examples of these and it was interesting to see the subtle differences in the stock making such a difference to the feel of the cards.
Also presented were some examples of books, magazines and posters displaying different qualities and attributes of the suitability of each sample. There were some unique and innovative techniques used for the binding and layout, such as stitching to hold the magazine together and die cut pages to display images from the page below.
Knowing that there is a range of quality stock out there has opened my eyes to the possibility of what I can do with my design and I can begin to push the boundaries even further in terms of my printed articles.
