A New Issue of Pages, a New Cover Approach
By The Pages Team
We hope you’re enjoying the Fall 2024/Winter 2025 issue of Pages and that you were intrigued by our cover treatment.
We’ve fallen into a fun pattern with our covers. Our stellar designer Todd Verlander submits the issue’s cover design, and the Lane team gets to work tossing around treatment ideas. We are, admittedly, like kids in a candy store. We have options are our disposal (obvi), and we like to demo what we can do.
In this case, our intrepid Quality Assurance, Print & Color guru Alex Paige (if you know her, you love and appreciate her) had a lightbulb moment: “Why don’t we make the art look like a sticker?” From there, we were off and running.
Once we decide what we want the visual effect to be, there is typically a fair amount of discussion about how to achieve it since there are multiple elements that can be utilized—levers that can be pulled, if you will.
In this case, our task was to create contrast between a glossy “sticker” element (mouth and coverline art) and the balance of the cover. We decided to do this using a combination of gloss and texture.
We opted to use a gloss cover paper so that when we knocked out the central art element, we’d immediately have the start of a glossy appearance in that area.
Then we ordered a special plate that enabled us to lay down a UV “Grit” coating on all of the cover (C1 and C4) except for the knockout area. We love UV Grit because it provides a uniform, subtle texture.
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We also applied a gloss varnish to the knockout area in order to bump up the gloss effect as well as protect that area from scuffing. We applied both coatings in one pass on our cover press.
Once we decided on our plan, the only design adjustment required was to drop the central art element down a bit from the masthead in order to provide enough room to add a 3/16” border around the art. This border provided a generous margin for registration between the coatings, but it also enhanced the sticker effect.
The funnest thing? We made stickers! (Plug for Sticker Mule’s easy process and affordable pricing.) If you’d like one, drop us a note at [email protected].
