PaperSpecsGallery.com Presents: One Steuart Lane

If you’ve spent any time in San Francisco you know just how hypnotic the Bay’s rippling waters can be. It’s this same sense of calm and natural beauty that the One Steuart Lane luxury waterfront condos were built to provide, and that this portfolio captures so elegantly thanks to a well-thought-out binding option and clever, clever packaging.

With floor-to-ceiling windows and glass panels that open up nearly the entire living room, each apartment in this luxury block is designed to bring the beauty and breezes of the waterfront inside. (These range from $1.6 million to $10 million-plus, in case you were wondering.)

Right from the beginning branding agency Allis Studio and Kingsbury Press cleverly mimic this “bringing the outside inside” by recreating the Bay’s shimmering surface on the book’s slipcase. More accurately described as a “neck box,” the case is offset printed a deep Blue with the bottom section covered in clear foil in a wave-like pattern.

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Stretching across both the bottom of the case and the lid is the property’s logo – a silhouette of the 20-story tower rendered in Gold foil – which makes for an eye-catching design accent.

And for those who appreciate the small but exquisite details in a great design, the words summing up this property wrap around the outer edges of the case: “Here between stone and glass, exists the promise of an endless horizon….”

Foil alignment on the slipcase was especially tricky since it required the printer’s finishing team to print guidelines on the inside, as well as multiple mock-ups. But as you can see, it all came out beautifully.

Removing the lid reveals the book inside. While its cover at first appears to be a simple White, closer examination reveals that the 135 gm [90 lb.] Colorplan Pristine White paper also features the clear foil wave pattern, echoing the rippling water effect on the outer case.

The Book

A big selling point for One Steuart Lane is that owing to its design, the only thing separating residents from the waterfront is seamless glass, which offers views of the Bay Bridge, Alcatraz and the water.

This panoramic feel is brilliantly reproduced in paper form by printing lush photographs seamlessly across spreads without the “gutters” that usually interrupt such printed images. Kingsbury Press accomplished this by using their proprietary “K-Bind,” an exquisite lay-flat binding method. The result: full, uninterrupted views, just like those enjoyed from the windows of One Steuart Lane.

There are other impressive details to be found in this book to be sure, including:

• Half-circle die-cut page tabs similar to those found on dictionaries that allow you to jump to a specific section
• Enticing phrases printed in Gold foil across photographs as well as on their own

Yet it is the combination of foil accents and rich, uninterrupted photographs that makes this volume the next best thing to a quiet night on the Bay.