Steinway & Sons
About Steinway & Sons
What distinguishes Steinway pianos more than anything else is the company’s unwavering dedication to a single ideal: make the finest pianos in the world. Steinway & Sons Marketing Director Loretta Russo applied the same thinking when it came time to produce the company’s new 38-page catalog. “This showpiece was very important to us and I couldn’t just give the job to any printer.
The Challenges
“It was more than a printing job for me, it was a very personal feeling that they are to pianos what we are to printing. It just felt right.”
“This was a complicated job because we were trying to recreate a catalog we had done nearly 10 years ago,” she explains. “We had no original transparencies and no films. All that was left was the raw digital file. So basically we had to start from scratch.”
Just as important was cost. The original catalog incorporated a number of pricey production techniques including a tipped-on photo and fly leafs. Russo wanted to produce a piece that was in keeping with Steinway’s high standards, but for less.
The Solution
Intell made a number of recommendations including using a whiter, brighter stock to bring out the color and richness of Steinway’s pianos. We also suggested an intelligent way to recreate the look and feel of the original cover at a lower cost. The job they were trying to recreate had a printed label of a keyboard tipped onto the front cover by hand—a very expensive and time-consuming process. I suggested that we print the photograph directly on the page and have it show through a die-cut and embossed textured cover. We achieved the same effect at a dramatically lower cost.
The Result
"The end result is as good or better than the original. Everyone who sees it comments on the quality of the brochure."
Loretta Russo
Marketing Director
Steinway & Sons