McMillans wins inaugural new-style Agfa award
In awarding the prize for the Most Creative Use of Imaging
in Printing to JS McMillan Printing Group, which was accepted by Julie-Anne McMillan, (pictured with Garry Muratore) who is not only Bob’s daughter but a director of the company, the dominance of digital processes in another former craft was confirmed.
“The advent of digital cameras has changed the process of image capture more in a couple of years than in the 150 years since photography was invented,” said Muratore. “Once the core technology to image capture, film has been replaced by CCD’s & digital media storage. This has resulted in many of the physical constraints of photography being totally negated, leaving photographers or designers limited purely by their imagination.
“With this in mind, we at Agfa decided it was time, after 21 years to update our award, and open it up to not just photography, but to any of the processes now related to image capture and design. Agfa’s corporate belief is that in the future, imaging will
increasingly hold the key to communication. And
I’m pleased to say the winning entry of our award
embodies our vision statement.
JS McMillan have a tradition of producing the most amazing and creative Christmas cards. So popular are these pieces I am told that customers use cards of Christmas’s past to create office nativity scenes. The 2003 McMillan Christmas card utilised a combination of innovative imaging techniques including, photography, digital design and computer to plate.”
The Brief
Kim Munday, Senior Designer at McMillans tells how the award winning entry came about.
The Christmas card must be a 3-D construction and include Suzie (Robert’s
dog) and the wording < I>Season’s Greetings and Happy New Year There should be enough room to write a short message and an area to overprint different names e.g J.S. McMillan Printing Group.
The Concept
Once the design/concept is established, I start work on a knife design dummy, ensuring that the basic folds and mechanics will work with the concept.
The assembly should be relatively straight forward.
Research postage sizes and costs, without compromising the design – A5 was chosen.
Check the overall size will fit on the sheet of board, allowing for bleed and grip.
Source an embellishment that will give the card the “WOW” factor.
After considering at holographic transparent foil and pearl foil I selected multi-colour glitter coat. I noticed that the sample flaked off when creased, so rang Allcoats and enquired as to how to fix this problem. The solution was to leave a gutter of 1.5mm either side of the fold.
The Photography
Source suitable toys and photograph.
Organise a shot of the dog (Suzie) to be taken. Buy clothes for my nephew and tee up a time for me to photograph him. (This ensured that I got the exact shot I was after and saved money on photo library shots).
The Artwork
Hardware used: Apple Macintosh G4
Software used: Adobe Photoshop 5.5
Adobe Illustrator 8.0.1
QuarkXpress 4.11
The Illustrations
The Artwork was split into four basic groups
1. Outer (the toy shop building and Child)
Using the knife dummy for measures, in
Photoshop I illustrate the building. This is done in three different files left hand side of the toy shop, right hand side of the toy shop and the door. There is also an additional file for the cover. All photos were retouched (Suzie was given a make over) and snow added using special effect in the airbrush filter.
2. Small inner (Left hand side of the toy shop)
Each individual toy is deep etched then placed in a photoshop file. Each photoshop layer denotes a layer on the artwork. Once I am happy with the composition the knife is drawn for each layer and exported to be used in constructing the knife guide in Illustrator at a later date. The file is now split up into layers (5 files), one file for each layer. Bleed, shelf and shadows are then added.
3. Big inner (Right hand side of the toy
shop)
As above
4. Awning
A slightly different approach was used
for this piece. The basic artwork and
knife was created in Illustrator as it has
stronger filters, than Photoshop 8. then
imported into Photoshop to complete
the rest of the rendering/illustration.
The knife guide
Using the files exported from Photoshop
earlier I combined them for each of the
four pieces needed to complete the card.
The embellishment
Glittercoat (5th Colour)
Open up the Photoshop files that require
glittercoat and select this area fill with
solid black and save as a tiff file using
only the layer with the black.
Artwork
This is where all the pieces come
together...
The Photoshop images/illustrations are
imported into QuarkXpress, followed by
the knife guides and lastly the glittercoat
images, a 5th colour is created and the tiff
files are changed to this colour.
There is now a 6th colour created in
Quark to indicate gold foil.
Mock Up
This is the first time that the entire
concept is viewed complete.
The Quark files are printed to a lazer,
mounted on board and cut out and
assembled, it is then shown to the
committee.
The Committee
It is decided that the card is to be 210mm
x 210mm as opposed to the original
design size of 210 x 148.5mm.
The alterations are made, and a new
mock up assembled and approved.
CTP
From the Quark files a PDF is created
ready for CTP.
In awarding the prize for the Most Creative Use of Imaging
Source suitable toys and photograph.
Organise a shot of the dog (Suzie) to be taken. Buy clothes for my nephew and tee up a time for me to photograph him. (This ensured that I got the exact shot I was after and saved money on photo library shots).
The Artwork
Hardware used: Apple Macintosh G4
Software used: Adobe Photoshop 5.5
Adobe Illustrator 8.0.1
QuarkXpress 4.11
The Illustrations
The Artwork was split into four basic groups
Using the knife dummy for measures, in
Photoshop I illustrate the building. This is done in three different files left hand side of the toy shop, right hand side of the toy shop and the door. There is also an additional file for the cover. All photos were retouched (Suzie was given a make over) and snow added using special effect in the airbrush filter.
Each individual toy is deep etched then placed in a photoshop file. Each photoshop layer denotes a layer on the artwork. Once I am happy with the composition the knife is drawn for each layer and exported to be used in constructing the knife guide in Illustrator at a later date. The file is now split up into layers (5 files), one file for each layer. Bleed, shelf and shadows are then added.
3. Big inner (Right hand side of the toy
shop)
As above
A slightly different approach was used
for this piece. The basic artwork and
knife was created in Illustrator as it has
stronger filters, than Photoshop 8. then
imported into Photoshop to complete
the rest of the rendering/illustration.
The knife guide
Using the files exported from Photoshop
earlier I combined them for each of the
four pieces needed to complete the card.
The embellishment
Glittercoat (5th Colour)
Open up the Photoshop files that require
glittercoat and select this area fill with
solid black and save as a tiff file using
only the layer with the black.
Artwork
This is where all the pieces come
together...
The Photoshop images/illustrations are
imported into QuarkXpress, followed by
the knife guides and lastly the glittercoat
images, a 5th colour is created and the tiff
files are changed to this colour.
There is now a 6th colour created in
Quark to indicate gold foil.
Mock Up
This is the first time that the entire
concept is viewed complete.
The Quark files are printed to a lazer,
mounted on board and cut out and
assembled, it is then shown to the
committee.
The Committee
It is decided that the card is to be 210mm
x 210mm as opposed to the original
design size of 210 x 148.5mm.
The alterations are made, and a new
mock up assembled and approved.
CTP
From the Quark files a PDF is created
ready for CTP.