Our customer in Melbourne, Australia had done some previous projects with us but had never done anything related to publishing. G&S asked Asia Print to advise and consult on the project from its inception. After some discussion with G&S about their concept and where these books were likely to be placed in the market we were able to work backwards and recommend page sizes, paper stocks, binding method, coatings and other finishing work to achieve this goal. In addition to the requirement to produce a high quality product at a completive commercial price, we also had to consider that the books needed to be written in and be very durable, as they had potential to be kept for many decades.

Our solution was to recommend hardcover Smyth sewn book with a protective matte PVC lamination. The text pages had to be an acid free archival quality paper with a dull finish so it could be written on. For the non written areas a spot gloss coating was used to highlight the design elements. We produced several variations of blank mock-ups of the book on the actual paper stocks, using the chosen binding method, This hands on evaluation gave the customer confidence to proceed in what would prove be a very successful project.