LUXURY paper supplier Wigston Papers has launched a new swatch book aimed at designers and printers.
The Leicestershire-based company’s new Senses colour swatch book features at least one sample of every substance in the range, along with every shade. It contains 67 different sheets, comprising 35 colours and up to 12 different grammages, from 90gsm to 3mm thick.
Rob Walker, managing director at Wigston Paper told Packaging Scotland that when the supplier approached printers, designers and brands, the consistent message was that they “could never get a hold of enough coloured paper ranges”.
“It was evident to us that there was a need in the marketplace,” Rob said. “We were reading the signals for probably 12 months that this was the case and it’s absolutely essential that we have unique propositions. Uniqueness could be a shade; it could be a surface; it could be the tactile properties of the paper and board.
“For us it’s totally new ground and we’re not looking to compete exactly, we’re there to augment what is already available as a range to the design and brand fraternity, so it’s about offering that greater selection.”
Rob said the paper was destined for a number of markets including solid boxes and exclusive communications for “high-end luxury type finished products”.
He explained, “We specifically chose the substances that would fit that best – so 350gsm, 500gsm and 700gsm for covers; we were looking at 120gsm and 140gsm for box wraps, both internal and external; we were looking at 250gsm for some of the smaller format covers and 90gsm for even more intricate inserts in smaller boxes because the lighter the substance, the more easily it can fold.
“Then of course we’ve got the very thick substrates, Senses+, which are destined for thicker packaging applications, so possibly solid boxes but without the need for wrapping,” Rob continued. “Rather than everything being wrapped around a very basic substrate you use the colour-through substrate itself for both construction and its pure aesthetic appeal.”
Feedback from industry found that many swatch books were very bulky and difficult to carry around, Rob said. The Senses swatch book has been designed not to interfere with the palm of the user’s hand as they push the samples with their thumb and aims to make colour selection easier as shades can be compared side by side.
“If you’re a creative using the swatch day by day, there’s nothing more frustrating than not being able to compare the two sheets side by side,” Rob explained.
“If you have a full colour pallet – say you’re picking out a brown and a blue and a grey – there is nothing worse than having them all on separate leaves in different parts of the same swatch book, which is perfect bound or just thermal bound at the spine.
“A lot of creatives will thumb through these things and they’ll be pushing it, for the most part, from right to left…so (we) decided to take off the bottom left corner of the swatch so that it moved freely through the palm of your hand, rather than a corner digging into your palm every time you shifted one of the swatch sheets over.”
Rob said that the company had to make a “radical” change in recent years, with the aim of moving from a paper merchant simply providing stock for clients, to an active collaborator in their design process.
“We’ve been having to convey the message to the target audience, ‘Let’s have a look at a project, let’s partner with you on this, let’s see what we can do, what you can do, and we can probably mutually benefit’. We’re always about a win-win relationship; it’s never one sided, which is what I feel the merchant perspective is.”
Reflecting on the potential of the Senses range north of the border, Rob added, “We’ve definitely got the whisky market in our sights; that is a massive market and we are dedicated to making an approach to that marketplace and seeing what the partners in that marketplace require.”
