To mark 400 years since the death of Shakespeare in April 1616, Cutler and Gross launched an eyewear collection to celebrate the Bard, and asked Leycol to produce a limited-edition look-book showcasing the range. The challenge was accepted with haste.

What did you produce?

Cutler and Gross’ Shakespeare Collection is a 48pp-plus covers look-book printed in a run of 3,000. Previous Cutler and Gross look-books had been significantly smaller, but this one showcased the Shakespeare Collection along with the rest of the Cutler and Gross catalogue. 

It was printed over a period of seven days, after the artwork was signed off at the beginning of August, and sent out to Cutler’s clients at the end of the month.

What did the job entail?

The books were printed on Leycol’s six-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster CD 102 and PUR bound using a new binding system for Leycol called J-Binding. The 48-staff firm, which also runs a 12-colour Heidelberg, used 270gsm Colorplan Bagdad Brown paper, with ‘Fabric’ embossing, for the cover and 160gsm Naturalis Smooth Absolute White for the text pages.

What challenges were overcome?

Leycol sales manager Greg Wilson said the company, which has been in operation for more than 40 years, found that the foiling had been the main challenge.

 “When you’re foiling on a board, it is quite difficult to get the registration to fit. We’ve found this before as we do quite a lot of foiling,” he said.

“But it ended up working really well.”

What was the feedback?

Cutler and Gross senior graphic designer Sheetal Kapoor said: “It was brilliant, Leycol provided everything we asked for. Myself and Greg met a few times discussing different ideas and this seemed like the best solution. 

“Our previous books have been much shorter and the whole way we were doing this entirely changed so that’s why we had to meet quite a lot but we ended up being very happy with the finished product.”