I thought that this month I would focus on a perfect bound book project I worked on with one of our longest running clients,
R S Johnson Fine Art. Established in 1955, R.S. Johnson Fine Art specializes in museum quality works of art ranging from Old Master works on paper to 19th and 20th Century paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture. Featured artists include the likes of Rembrandt, Matisse and Picasso.
R S Johnson, a client of ours since 2008, prints a
perfect bound book generally every quarter. I wanted to highlight this project as there are a number of elements involved including printing and binding the books,
fulfillment and mailing.
Getting the Project Started
The first phase of this project starts with proofing. With any large order, one of the things that makes us a little different from other printers is that we can do multiple hard copy proofs for clients so that they can see how their artwork looks once printed and also see how the books are coming together throughout the design phase. As pages are added or taken away and if stocks are changed or switched out we have to constantly be checking that the perfect bound book is coming together and aligning correctly so that when the books are bound everything lines up.
[caption id="attachment_671" align="alignnone" width="4032"]
An example of perfect bound books and all the items in our fulfillment project.[/caption]
Printing and Perfect Binding
Once the proofs have been approved, we then move on to the mass printing phase of the project. This particular time the order consisted of 3000 books total, 2 sizes with different artwork and page counts. We typically do all of the printing at our location at 811 W. Evergreen Avenue and then ship the prints out to our larger production facility in the suburbs. This not only speeds up the completion time but also saved on cost for the client. A project of this scale and size usually takes 2 full weeks or 10 business days from print to complete cut and bound books. The attention to detail that our print technicians is second to none as if one page or sheet is not printed and collated correctly the whole order would end up misprinted. This has not occurred once after almost 10 years working together (special thanks to Brad, Jerry, Todd and Francisco for all their work on these large projects!!).
Mailing and Fulfillment
Once all the books have been completed and bound, we then move to the fulfillment and mailing phase of the project. This particular mailer consisted of the two printed and bound books, a scored preview card and an insert card. First, we received the mailing list from the client which we then “scrub” for bad addresses such as moved with no forwarding addresses or undeliverable as addressed. Once the client has corrected and we have an approved mailing list we then do a mail merge so we can print all names and addresses directly to the envelopes. From here the rest is all fulfillment. Our guys inserted and collated both books and cards into envelopes (please see attached video clip), sealed and dropped to the post office.
https://youtu.be/3bVw-5Zbomo
Whether you have a large project requiring a lot of just a few perfect bound book like this or just a small personal project you are working on, from printing and mailing to design and fulfillment we are a full service print shop and can handle any print project you have, large or small.