This year's Christmas card from Iggesund is actually a booklet of seven cards depicting the holiday season in various climate zones, ranging from a snowy Christmas in northern Europe to China's upcoming Year of the Horse. The material is Iggesund's folding box board Incada, chosen to celebrate the launch in 2013 of a new generation of Incada and to mark Iggesund's recent switch to biomass as the sole energy source used to produce Incada.
Van Heertum Design VHD in Tilburg, the Netherlands was commissioned to design the card and manage its production. The starting point was the new Incada with its higher whiteness and increased stiffness.
"Based on these ingredients we then searched for the design motifs," explains Rob van Heertum of VHD. "We thought Incada's natural white would be perfect for a snowy scene, and winter is a good representation of the holiday season. Though for a global company like Iggesund, we mustn't forget that on the other side of the equator from Europe, this time of year is not cold but warm and colourful."
The sheets featuring the seven inner cards and the front and back covers went through a five-colour offset press several times and were then hot foil stamped or foil embossed. The word "NEW" was then die cut through all seven cards to symbolise both the new Incada and the new year.
"The main production challenge lay in registering and die cutting the seven different cards," Rob van Heertum continues. "After printing, the sheets were transported to the hot foil printer, where three print runs were done on a Starfoil machine.
"We used both foil embossing and hot foil flat. Then the die lines and die cuts were done. On a WPO 304 the letters were cut and pushed out and the fold lines were realised. Then Drukkerij Tielen did the finishing. The cards were cut, gathered, ordered, glued and stitched."
In this project, Drukkerij Tielen did the offset printing and finishing, Drukkerij Hensen foliedrukkers and Kurz Benelux stood for the hot foil stamping and foil embossing, and TSO Packaging Printers did the die cutting with tools from KDS Stansvormen.
