Paper before ink

Every other decision in a job can be revised. Plates can be recut, inks reformulated, layouts reset. The paper cannot, because by the time anyone is printing on it the sheet has already been formed, and a watermark, a fibre load or a frangible gum coat is a decision made in the wet end of a mill weeks earlier.

This makes the substrate the natural foundation of a security specification, and it is why the first question we ask a new client is not what the document should look like but where it will spend its life.

The questions that decide the stock

Will it be framed, folded, carried in a pocket, glued to a container, filed flat in a registrar’s cabinet? Will it be checked in a lit room or at a gate? Must it survive fifty years, or one evening? Is it meant to be destroyed on use?

Each answer eliminates stocks. By the time they are all answered the paper has usually chosen itself, and the interesting design work can begin on top of a foundation that will not have to be revisited.