Now in its 10th year, “U B the Judge” is Appleton Coated's (Kimberly, WI) annual design competition. Attendees at five major market events cast their votes with some input from a design council.
Appleton asked the designers when they realized paper's impact on the way their design comes across. Here's what they said.
“Early on, I acquired mentors who had love affairs with paper. One woman would hold the paper up to her ear and snap it. She'd say, ‘Feel it. Touch it. Does it talk to you? Does it make you smile? Is that really what you are trying to achieve?’
“Other times, my mentors would take a paper dummy and drop it on the table to see if it had that impressive ‘thump’ factor. On my first press check, when the paper came off the press, they'd even smell it. It was romance!”
— Bill Thorburn, executive design director, Carmichael Lynch Thorburn (Minneapolis)
“In school, I took a print production class, but I really came to appreciate paper when I got to print a poster for design class. I didn't understand the importance of paper choice until well after it was printed. The paper was not great quality, and I remember being disappointed in how the poster looked. After that, I always paid attention to what paper my job was printing on.”
— Jill Howry, principal & creative director, Howry Design Associates (San Francisco)
“My earliest paper influence was parchment. Even as a little kid, I was a history buff. I was given a copy of the Constitution printed on fake parchment paper and reproductions of Confederate money and early American bills. They were always on parchment, which was yellow and brittle, the exact opposite of the papers you would typically see in the classroom. When I got into design, parchment became the first paper I specified, but haven't used it again since. I haven't had reason to. In design, paper is as much a tool as typography. It has to suit the job.”
— Marc English, principal, Marc English Design (Austin, TX)
“My brother is a printer. Between semesters in college and during holidays, I worked for him. That's when I was first exposed to colored papers, coated papers and swatchbooks. Part of my job was to air out the paper when it came in. You figure out quickly how humidity is a factor in printing papers.
“As you load the paper into the feeder on the press, you realize there are two sides to the sheet. You begin to see differences in papers, in thickness, and see that you have to spec the right paper to get the best print quality. Working on press with my brother allowed me to have an appreciation for the technical aspects of paper.”
— Ken Fox, principal & creative director, 50,000feet, Inc. (Chicago)
“In high school, we worked on a class project: a recycling center ad. The teacher told us that this is what commercial artists do. I thought, ‘Hey, I can do that and still make money!’ Those two things went well together. Later, I went to Hartford Art School where we had to take a full production course. Within that segment, we visited a paper mill and were able to see how important paper was in the scheme of designing.”
— Jonathan Gouthier, principal, Jonathan Gouthier Design (New York & Florida)
“As a kid, I had a babysitter who was trained as a watercolor artist and did ceramics out of her home. She was a key influence in my life. She recognized I had some natural artistic ability. I became aware of paper early on. I found myself doodling this and that and started to realize that different surfaces yielded different results depending in what kind of medium you were working with, whether it was paint or crayons. Paper plays a key role in the continuity and consistency of what you are trying to project.”
— Tim Hale, senior VP design management & marketing, Fossil, Inc. (Richardson, TX)
“Before I became a designer, I studied fine art and was a chef. As a fine artist, I liked to work with paper. I liked to saturate the paper to get texture. So I became very aware of pastel papers, watercolor papers, cotton-content papers and the differences in substrates. My experience as a chef also influenced how I approached design. When you run a restaurant you have to plan ahead. Every little element contributes to how you cook it, what you add to it and what you base it in. For me, production and paper are really important.”
— David Kohler, senior VP & creative director, Addison (New York City)