Produced for the recent Webstock Conference, the project entailed 550 units of a laptop compendium, lanyard programme, baggage tag, menus and a 46-page handbook. However, late confirmation of the actual conference details meant sign-off for most of the work was literally received on the Tuesday and Thursday before the Monday conference start date, explains DPOD Wellington general manager Darren Eagle.
“Although a lot of preparatory work was undertaken a couple of months previously, the danger was that while a test can go beautifully — you’re never sure how it is going to go in a live run under pressure,” he says.
A major complicating factor in the job was the use of tricky environmentally-friendly paper stocks.
“One stock weight specified by the designer was 366gsm Opal Box Board and ideally, with digital machines, you’re not supposed to be going over 300gsm. Consequently, the only way we could get it all to work was to hand-feed and hand-remove each sheet through our Xerox 8000 machine.
“Internal pages and other components such as stickers were ultimately produced using our HP Indigo. But this then created complexities with achieving colour matches on different stocks and using different print processes.”
Mr Eagle says the handbook itself also presented the technical challenge of incorporating a fold-out and requiring extra pages to be included late in the process.
“The fold-out wasn’t the last page which meant we had to print that separately and insert it into the correct area of the book, which further slowed the process. Because of the extra pages, we also initially had some difficulty sourcing nickel eyelets deep enough.”
With time running out the print finishing company lined up for the job said it could no longer deliver on deadline. Instead, DPOD was offered the loan of a foot-operated binding machine.
“When the finisher said he couldn’t do it, there was a little period of ‘we’re in trouble here’. We are only a team of seven — and two were away — and of course this wasn’t the only job we were handling at the time.
“There was initial panic, but we sat down and worked out how we were going to do it and how many hours were needed. We are fortunate that part of the DPOD ethos is we do what we have to do to get the job done on time and looking good.
“So, each component of the handbook was basically hand-produced. The pages were printed, drilled for the eyelets and then assembled for the binding. Because the handbook was quite thick, all of the operator’s weight was required on the pedal to ensure that each of the 1100 eyelets closed properly.
“We all worked until the early hours on Thursday and Friday and then came in again in the weekend. For example, one of our team who lives in Raumati (50 kilometres north of Wellington) would stay until 2am in the morning, go home and then be back at 9am the next morning.”
However, Mr Eagle says the team’s effort in producing their “most physically-demanding job” to date was fully appreciated by the client, Webstock.
“Our customer turned up on the Sunday and got completely and utterly blown away — she was moved to tears when she saw it according to the design company, DNA.
“When you see a client who really understands what you’ve gone through to get a job done and they look at it and say ‘I can’t believe you guys have achieved that’ — that is really satisfying.”
As well as having delivered the conference promotional material to a consistently-high quality and on time, Mr Eagle says his team is also proud to have been able to reflect the vision of such a “phenomenal design concept”.
The Webstock conference project is among the work being judged this week for the 2008 Pride In Print Awards, due to be hosted at Auckland’s Sky City Convention Centre on Friday May 16.
Paper stocks used in this work included Opal Box Board 366gsm and 600um from Spicers Paper (handbook covers, lanyard programme cover and baggage tag) as well as Eco 100 100gsm from BJBall Papers, GP Box Board 363gsm and 630um from BJBall Papers (single lanyard).
Established in 2004, DPOD Wellington is a subsidiary of New Zealand-owned and operated DPOD Auckland.
