When it comes to both "getting" and appreciating great design, there are few people we hold in higher esteem than Armin and Bryony over at UnderConsideration. Not only do they scour the world in search of design that inspires, the materials for their Brand New Conference — or, as it was branded last year, Brand Nieuwe Conference (using the Dutch spelling since it took place in Amsterdam) — are always just as impressive as the designs they celebrate year-round.
Perhaps the first thing you'll notice is that these 92-page-plus-cover programs are not printed square but as parallelograms, a riff on the angle of the conference's logo.
Click here or on the video below to watch Sabine Lenz as she discusses the Brand Nieuwe Conference Program
So far, so freaky. (Can't even begin to imagine what the InDesign files look like on this ...) But UnderConsideration wouldn't be UnderConsideration if they merely left it at this. Now, about those covers. Armin says they were "printed on Colorplan, from our sponsor G.F. Smith, which has a crazy range of textures (they call them embossings) and we chose a 'Morocco' embossing that made the covers feel like an old canvas." Looking closely you can pick up a bit of that texture here:
Of course the other detail you can see right away: those crazy laser cuts. But note that there's a method to their madness. "... Each cover has a different letter from the logo laser-cut on it," Armin explains. "There are 25 different paintings and drawings that repeat in the print run, so each one looks different." So let's take another look at those covers all together again:
Brilliant, simply brilliant.
Sabine Lenz is the founder of PaperSpecs.com, the first online paper database and community specifically designed for paper specifiers.
Growing up in Germany, Sabine started her design career in Frankfurt, before moving to Australia and then the United States. She has worked on design projects ranging from corporate identities to major road shows and product launches. From start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, her list of clients included Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Deutsche Bank, IBM and KPMG.
Seeing designers struggle worldwide to stay current with new papers and paper trends inspired Sabine to create PaperSpecs, an independent and comprehensive Web-based paper database and weekly e-newsletter. She is also a speaker on paper issues and the paper industry. Some refer to her lovingly as the "paper queen" who combines her passion for this wonderful substrate called paper with a hands-on approach to sharing her knowledge.