It was recently reported that the top 20 hospitality companies in America generated approximately $215 billion in 2006. To succeed in such a highly competitive industry a company must aggressively cultivate new customers and at the same time, maintain customer loyalty. There are two key factors that create customer preference over time: differentiation and customer experience.

Starwood® Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, Inc., one of the world’s top five travel and hospitality companies understands just that. With approximately 850 properties in more than 95 countries Starwood Hotels is a company that has its finger directly on the pulse of the world’s most active travelers. Starwood’s nine different internationally renowned hotel and resort properties are some of the most recognizable and sought after brand names in the hotel industry, from the trendy W® Hotels with cutting edge music and its signature Whatever\Whenever service, or the luxurious St. Regis® known for its flawless service for the high-end traveler, to the upscale European inspired Le Méridien®, a brand known for its passion for food, art and style.

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In 2006, Starwood decided to redefine the branding of three of its other popular hotels – the Westin®, Sheraton®, and Four Points® by Sheraton. The impetus for the rebranding was the company’s repositioning of its corporate profile, moving from being seen as a real estate holding firm to being thought of as a branding and lifestyle company.

The immense project of rolling out three completely revamped brands in less than a year was handed over to the Starwood’s in-house marketing and design team. Senior Creative Director, Aimee Hoban, and Senior Director, Creative Services, Rick Lavoie managed the project. “Starwood’s main objective is to do everything we can to differentiate ourselves in the minds of travelers. Our hotels are about a lifestyle experience and about transcending that feeling back to home,” says Hoban.

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“The vision of a lifestyle experience for the Starwood properties is clear and unchanged. It is carried throughout all of the hotels, yet each remains autonomous and very distinctly its own brand,” said Senior Director, Rick Lavoie. Although the team was redeveloping the identities of the three brands at the same time, they had to maintain the specific personality each is known for. For instance, Sheraton, the company’s largest brand found in major cities and luxurious water resorts worldwide, is an upscale property known for making its guests feel a sense of comfort and belonging by providing a warm welcoming connection to what matters most to travelers – home, the office, and the best spots in town.

The Sheraton differs from the Four Points by Sheraton, which has an approachable style and spirited “can-do” service at an honest value for the self-sufficient traveler. Then there is the high-profile Westin brand, renowned not only for its comfortable beds but also for inspiring guests from the first impression with its sensory experiences of light, music, white tea scent and botanicals.

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For the Starwood marketing team, the idea of brand impression is not left only to the hotel’s amenities and services. A customer’s experience carries through to all the printed collateral that is associated with the hotels, from notepads, key packets, TV channel cards, and check out receipts, to the doorknob hangers. “Many of these items are high touch points for guests. They generally pick these things up and hold another piece of the experience in their hands,” said Hoban.

Since this was to be such a large print production program with so many different items to be produced, each needing to fit a different persona, but each needing a distinct level of quality, the creative team considered another way to look at paper selection. “In the past we had two shelves of paper sample books, we never knew if they were all current, and we would sometimes end up specifying papers that weren’t available,” said Hoban. “And, we worried that we would have to sacrifice quality for budgetary reasons since we needed to order so many different papers.” According to

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Added to the challenge of developing the collateral for three brands at once in a short period of time, Hoban and her team were also looking for papers to comply with Starwood’s sustainability initiative. “The goal was to find one paper source that offered enough variation for all our needs, one which included environmental papers, and one that could see Starwood as a whole,” said Hoban.

Starwood turned to the Sterling Group, a paper and sourcing consultant, who found that Mohawk met multiple criteria, such as variety of substrates available under one roof: speed to market, environmentally manufactured, level of quality, and best possible value. “The baseline objective was to make everyone happy — creative wanted a large selection of white papers, in addition to many luscious finishes, and production had the responsibility to procure paper within various brand specific budgets. It was our job to align with and support the end user on both fronts,” said Hilary Strauss Hahn, Managing Director, Global Marketing, Sterling Group.

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As Starwood’s Senior Creative Director, with a time-sensitive project in development, Hoban was very hands-on with the decision. “The process took a couple of months but it was a valuable experience. Mohawk paper is such great quality. Their selection holds something for all of our needs, and they lead in their environmental paper choices. As with any creative process, once it is done, it all makes sense,” says Hoban.

Mohawk Navajo and Strathmore Writing were the papers chosen for the Sheraton materials. Mohawk Options, Strathmore Writing and Mohawk Via are all used to represent the Four Points by Sheraton hotels. “Color is the most important part of Four Points. Each of these papers reproduces the color we want to perfection,” says Hoban.

The luxurious of Mohawk Superfine lends itself to the Westin persona.

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The collective efforts of Starwood’s marketing team and the Sterling Group to combine purchasing discipline with environmental focus meant that Starwood saved money and realized significant environmental benefits. Because 100% of the electricity used by Mohawk is offset with certified windpower certificates, the Sterling Group reports that Starwood’s 2007 environmental savings is equal to preserving1467.61 trees, not creating 420,800 lbs. of waterborne waste, not consuming 1,032,412,010 BTUs of energy, and preventing134,881 net greenhouse gases.

And, Starwood continues its branding initiatives with the addition of new brands to the Starwood portfolio – Aloft and Element. Mohawk’s brand portfolio continues to provide the teams the resources they need to distinguish the important touch points for each hotel’s positioning of unique experience.

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The Red Carpet Goes Green

While you sat on your couch admiring the designs adorning your favorite celebrities at this year’s Primetime Emmy Awards show did you pause at all to think about the designers that didn’t get acknowledged on the red carpet? The designers who created the pieces that promoted and surrounded the event — the invitations, tickets, posters, programs, and yes, the envelope?

Scott Buford, Art Director, Academy of Television Arts and Sciences reinvents the look of the Emmy’s each year, and this year’s 59th Primetime Emmy Awards was no exception. Buford, a former Disney designer, pushed beyond the creation of the alluring graphics of the award show and set new goals this year to create brand consistency across all media including print and motion graphics, and worked with all the show partners to make the event as green as it can be.

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Designing the visual branding for each year’s show starts more than a year in advance, and involves hundreds of people. The collaboration between all the related departments determined the focus that was this year’s theme: to convey the feeling from the performer’s point of view. “We wanted to capture the emotion of the event, the elegance surrounding the statue, the feeling of excitement of looking out onto the stage from the performer’s perspective,” said Buford.

The final core visual was a dramatic departure from previous years featuring an elegant close up of the Emmy statuette with emotive, evening colors to suggest the lighting in the Shrine Auditorium. “It is truly regal in feeling,” says Buford. “I previewed the materials with many people, and the feedback has been very positive.” I asked them if they noticed something different. Most do not. I point out there’s no “gold.” We didn’t need it. The graphics are all about light and how it affects the mood of the room during the show. This graphic really gives it a different feeling.”

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Having achieved a consistent image across all media, Buford then focused on his second goal: a strong environmental story. “With over 45 different printed pieces to produce (invitations, letterhead, tickets, envelopes and dozens of other materials) and more than 1 million printed pieces, it was important for us to really think out of the box, about how we used materials and what materials we used.”

For the first time in Emmy history, Buford sought a corporate sustainability partner and found one with Mohawk Fine Papers. “I am proud to say that all of the 59th Emmy materials that were produced on a mix of Mohawk’s carbon neutral papers. Special runs of Mohawk Options 100% postconsumer FSC certified waste fiber papers, were made carbon neutral. By making these environmental choices, the 59th Primetime Emmy Awards saved the equivalent of:
• 130 trees
• 55,000 gallons of wastewater
• 6,000 lbs of solid waste
• 19,000 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions
• Or, not driving 7500 miles in a passenger car

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In addition, all materials were printed by California-based Ventura Printing, which is an FSC certified printer, so all of the final pieces are FSC approved. Ventura printed all materials with linseed oil-based inks on a waterless printing system that eliminates ozone-destroying, volatile organic compounds from the process. This saved 505,155 BTUs of energy from being consumed and 261 pounds of air emissions from being generated.

FOX, the Television Academy and the telecast producers set ambitious green goals, including the use of recyclable materials and recycling whenever possible; using hybrid and alternative fuel vehicles for transportation; and replacing production golf carts with bicycles.

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The goals set also included reducing power requirements and utilizing alternative and eco-friendly energy sources — including solar power — for red carpet arrivals, production and Primetime Emmy events. Plus, the production used locally grown and/or organic foods for press and event guests; and incorporated green themes into the televised broadcast.

“When you are doing all of this work, you don’t think about it too much. And then you see someone like Jeremy Piven win an Emmy (Ari Gold in HBO’s Entourage (‘Outstanding Supporting Actor In A Comedy Series 2006’) and then you realize how important this is to so many people. And the hard work is all worth it.”

The 59th Primetime Emmys aired on September 16th on FOX.

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The Academy of Art University Mastery

Fashion, advertising, graphic design, if it’s an education in the world of art and design you are looking for, the Academy of Art University is where it can be found. As the country’s largest private school of art and design, the Academy of Art University, located in San Francisco, California, is renowned not only for the excellence of its undergraduate programs, but for masters degrees it offers for 12 of its programs as well. The Academy offers 11 MFA degrees and a Masters of Architecture.

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The Academy’s reputed masters program has enticed many industry professionals to return to school to earn their masters degree including award winning designer, Michael Osborne who received his MFA from the School of Graphic Design in 2007; MFA alumnus Christopher Cortez who won the Tommy Hilfiger reality television show The Cut; and Ihsan Al-Hammouri, also an MFA graduate who designed a series of Arabic language typefaces which are commercially available from Linotype.

Each masters program is detailed in its 2008 course guide titled Mastery. To design Mastery, the school’s President, Dr. Elisa Stephens enlisted the best possible design team for the project – the Academy’s own School of Graphic Design. “What better team to create a book that personifies the level of expertise of our faculty, and the quality of our programs? We couldn’t be more pleased with the book,” said Dr. Stephens.

The design team for Mastery consisted of Mary Scott, Chair of School of Graphic Design; Phil Hamlett, Graduate Director of School of Graphic Design; and Hunter Wimmer, Associate Director of School of Graphic Design.

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Mastery, aptly named for the directive of the university’s masters program – to emphasize the mastery of the profession – is a beautifully designed perfect bound book full of artwork and imagery created by Academy graduate students. “We are very happy with how the piece turned out. Giving the book a smaller format than is typical for a program guide created a thicker book, providing it with more heft and sophistication,” said Phil Hamlett.

Hamlett, who heads up the sustainability initiatives for the School of Graphic Design, including teaching a class on sustainable design, and is Co-Chair of the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) Center for Sustainable Design and the driving force behind its popular Compostmodern design conference. Accordingly, the paper selection for Mastery and the environmental impacts of printing 125,000 copies was made with environmental consequences in mind.

The Academy has a variety of school-wide initiatives in place to address sustainable business practice and design curriculum. It is currently participating in a city-wide sponsorship program with Pacific Gas & Electric to curb power usage in San Francisco, and several academic programs within the Academy have collaborated with the city’s environmental department to promote its anti-junkmail campaign.

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Internally, the Academy is implementing a number of environmentally conscious strategies including: removing bottled water coolers and replacing them with filtered tap water fountains; instituting an aggressive recycling program; using biodiesel fuel in its cars and busses, and sponsoring the Compostmodern design conference.

Hamlett chose to print Mastery on FSC certified Mohawk Options 100% PC. “The paper had to be high quality to show the student’s artwork in its best light. Printing on uncoated paper is non-traditional so it was a bit of a leap of faith. The results achieved what we had hoped for,” says Hamlett.

Printing Mastery on a 100% recycled fiber paper allowed the Academy of Art University to create significant environmental savings such as preserving 935 trees for future use, not creating 2,701lbs.of waterborne waste, not generating 43,966 lbs. of solid waste, not consuming 662,612,400 BTU’s of energy, and preventing 86,568 lbs. of net greenhouse gases. Because Mohawk Options is manufactured with the use of wind-generated electricity, the Academy created an additional savings equivalent to not generating 44,980 lbs. of air emissions, displacing the use of 19 barrels of crude oil, and planting 3,040 trees.

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Japanese Fashion Designer Noriko Maeda Debuts Fresh Identity

In Japan, fashion designer Noriko Maeda is virtually a household name. Her clothes are sold in ten stores under the name Foxey and she published a magazine by the same name.

But in New York, Maeda focuses all her attention on a single Madison Avenue boutique in the Carlyle Hotel that bears her name. Noriko Maeda specializes in contemporary tailored suits, eveningwear, and accessories for women. The hallmark of her designs is the marriage of Eastern aesthetic traditions such as attention to detail with contemporary western colors and textures.

When Maeda decided to take her boutique to the next level, she turned to New York designer Robert Valentine of The Valentine Group, to create a new and unique identity for the store. They both knew the identity would have to perfectly capture her exclusive line of clothing to make the kind of lasting impression she wanted.

And that's just what The Valentine Group did. Valentine created everything from scratch, starting with the clothing label design, which was applied to the entire system from stationery to ribbon to shopping bags.

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"The X's are meant to imply stitching and the neutral colors were chosen for their luxurious and delicious feel,” says Valentine.

Although the neutral colors suggest a sense of longevity, Valentine wanted to give the look a twist, so he used a classic shade of pink on the backs of the stationery, inside envelopes and business cards.

To design an identity system that will make a lasting impression Valentine believes quality is the key ingredient.

"This does not mean it has to be expensive,” he says. “Instead, creating good design is about making the appropriate choices regarding every aspect of the design, from paper to colors to the printing process, in order to convey the right messages.”

Maeda's identity was printed on Mohawk Superfine, perfect for an elegant upscale identity such as this.

“We picked Mohawk Superfine because it's all about quality,” notes Valentine. “There is simply no other choice.”

Project name: Noriko Maeda/Identity
Paper grade(s): Mohawk Superfine

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Paper type(s): Text
Project type: Identity
Type of printing: Conventional offset
Equipment/Press: N/A
Industry of end-user(s): Fashion, Design
Other: N/A

Contact (s):
Designer: Robert Valentine
President
The Valentine Group
Address: 555 West 25th Street, Floor 3
New York, NY 10001
Phone: (212) 989-8188
Email: robert@valentinegroup.com

Printer: Dickson's Printing 
1484 Atlanta Industrial Way
Atlanta, GA 30331
Phone: 800.241.4811
Email: dicksonsinc@dicksons.com

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Darwin Professional Underwriters Annual

Change is the theme of the Darwin Professional Underwriters inaugural annual report. The book promises that with the company’s inception ‘nothing will ever be the same’. Darwin’s corporate philosophy – not unlike that of Darwin the naturalist – is to reject conventional thinking as a means to discover hidden marketplace opportunities. A specialty liability insurance company which serves executive, professional and health care liability constituencies, Darwin is constantly evolving its business model to identify and take advantage of coverage gaps. Initial project meetings established that Darwin’s first annual report should serve as a corporate capability marketing document.

According to Stephen Sills, CEO, “This annual is our stake in the ground, setting Darwin apart from its competition and signaling a new day in the insurance business.” The challenge for Bertz Design Group was to build the company’s reputation as an industry disruptor and meet the CEO’s high expectations for quality and content.

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From naming, to brand identity development and strategic implementation, Bertz has been integral in helping Darwin grow from an idea and a handful of employees in 2003 to their NYSE listing in 2006. Mohawk Options PC White Smooth was chosen to support the company’s positioning. In true character for company named Darwin, sending the correct environmental message with the printing and production of its annual report was of utmost importance. Not only did the paper have to meet environmentally sound standards, it also had to provide excellent ink hold out and fiber formulation to compliment the company’s bold visual approach. Additionally, the uncoated stock tempered the pages with a softer quality and inviting hand feel making for a highly approachable document.

Production:
Cover: 1st black, 2nd black, yellow, magenta, match cool gray and overall satin varnish over 4 color process, match cool gray and spot satin varnish
Narrative: 4 color process, match cool gray and satin varnish
Financials: match orange, match beige and match cool gray 11
Bindery: perfect bound

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The report has been well received by its stakeholders as a catalyst document for the company, and as of this writing has been recognized with gold awards from the CT Art Directors Club and Mercomm’s ARC Awards.

Paper grade:
Cover: Mohawk Options PC White Smooth 100# Cover
Text: Mohawk Options PC White Smooth 100# Text
Financials: Mohawk Options PC White Smooth 60# Text

Designer:
Bertz Design Group
Middletown, CT

Printer:
Finlay Printing
Bloomfield, CT

For more information on the companies in this story, please visit their websites:
Bertz Design Group: www.bertzdesign.com
Darwin Professional Underwriters: www.darwinpro.com
Finlay: www.finlay.com

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Sweet Things Come in Cool Boxes

It’s 3:00 in the afternoon and your inner Augustus Gloop is about to rip open the wrapper of the nearest chocolate bar and completely devour it before your taste buds have even had the chance to recognize what you are eating. Sound familiar?

Probably not to chocolatier Markus Candinas who believes that the act of eating chocolate is a personal experience meant to be savored — not gobbled down in record time. Since opening Candinas Chocolatier (www.candinas.com)12 years ago, he has considered the art of making fine chocolates to be just that, an art form meant to appeal to many senses including, taste and smell, as well as sight and touch. However, rather than force-feeding the notion of special-ness through the usual gold foil or shiny black boxes, Candinas wanted to package his chocolates in something more individual, something that became part of the personal experience.

Candinas, who has worked with Planet Propaganda for over 10 years, turned to Creative Director and Principal, Kevin Wade once again. Creating an experience through the packaging was one of Wade’s primary goals, “The creation of the chocolates is very personal experience for Markus and he wanted the packaging to be part of that experience. This package is not so easy to get into, and that was

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a conscious move. It’s not overly difficult or complicated, but opening it is a process that draws you in and gives you a greater appreciation for the treasures inside,” says Wade.

When creating the look for the packaging, Wade incorporated Candinas signature truffle shape: the “squircle,” is a hybrid of a square and circle that evolved when Candinas upgraded his candy making equipment. The top of the box is a richly colored geometric grid of squircles, with one containing the company logo. Over the box is a full sized sleeve that incorporates the same color scheme in a linear pattern, with a die-cut to reveal the company’s logo printed on the box. Graphically treated numbers appear on two sides of each box indicating how many pieces are within: 2, 9, 16, 25, and 36.

When deciding which paper to use for the packaging, Wade suggested Mohawk Navajo and Mohawk Options. “We like the Mohawk papers. We wanted two papers that were compatible but contrasted. We liked the texture and ‘toothiness’ of Options for the sleeve, and Navajo was a nice smooth contrast for the box without being too heavy or coated,” says Wade. The box is pasted with Mohawk Navajo, Brilliant White, 70 text, and the sleeve is Mohawk Options, True White, 65 cover.

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“Markus is really proud of his product overall and considers the packaging to be part of the brand,” says Wade. Inside the Verona, Wisconsin Store, the boxes are used as decor. Stacked like Legos®, the colors and graphics of the boxes display the message that Candinas chocolates are about the encounter as a whole — an event to be enjoyed.

Since opening in 1994, Swiss-trained confectioner Markus Candinas has been dedicated to creating his collection of chocolate mastery without the use of preservatives, believing that chocolate is best when consumed fresh, and so, must be eaten right away. Of course, you must first take the time to appreciate the presentation…patience Augustus, patience.

Designer: Kevin Wade
Principal/Creative Director
Planet Propaganda
Address: 605 Williamson Street
Madison, Wisconsin 53703
Phone: 608.256.0000
Email: kevin@planetpropaganda.com

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Printer: American Printing Company
Address: 2909 Syene Road
Madison, WI 53713
Phone: 608-271-6544
1-800-369-2544
Fax: 608-271-3475
Email: www.americanprintingco.com

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