DESCRIPTION The Korte Company 50th Anniversary Book CLIENT The Korte Company DESIGN CREDITS Agency: Tom, Dick & Harry Advertising Creative Director: David Yang Writer: Michael Herlehy Designer: Kim Knoll TYPE CREDITS DIN Clarendon Bold Kim Knoll's handwriting

QUANTITY PRODUCED 1,800 PRODUCTION COST $108,000 PRODUCTION TIME 3 Months DIMENSIONS: WIDTH × HEIGHT × DEPTH 9.5 in × 12.5 in × 0.75 in PAGE COUNT 144 PRINT METHOD Cover: Foil Stamp and Emboss Body: Offset PAPER STOCK Cover: 1/8-in chipboard Body: Mohawk Superfine, Smooth White, 100 lb Text NUMBER OF COLORS CMYK + 1 Spot (PMS 109) BINDING Perfect-bound OTHER We printed a flood of PMS 109 on linen paper, trimmed it and glued it on the spine as "binding tape." It looks just like the real thing.

To celebrate their 50th anniversary, the Midwest-based Korte Company commissioned Tom, Dick & Harry Advertising to create a book celebrating their efforts in building the best projects possible. Chicago-based designer Kim Knoll explains how the book came to be:

The client sent 8 large boxes full of loose photos, scrapbooks, files, photo albums and certificates... you name it, it was in one of those boxes. The contents pretty much covered every news clipping and photo the company had saved since 1950. After going through all the boxes, the idea was born. Why not create another scrapbook? But this time, it would be the highlights of every decade over the last 50 years. A good amount of time was spent going through everything and categorizing what was useful and what wasn't. The good stuff was sorted into decades and scanned at 600dpi to get the best resolution to work with for sizing, printing, etc. The way the book was designed, each photo or article that runs off the page continues on the next page. So if you were to rip every page out of the book and line them up side by side, it would create a continuous 50-year timeline.

The result is — not to pigeonhole the aesthetic but… — is a very proud, rough Midwestern book oozing a vintage feel that is very hard to resist. I think my favorite part are the 2-color endpapers. And perhaps the team's favorite part was the hardships:

This book took 10 months to put together and 3 months to print. Unfortunately, when the books were getting bound — all 1,800 of them — too much glue was used and it spread into the pages, making the pages stick together. Everything had to be reprinted, which is why the printing took longer than expected.

Lovely project. sucks about the binding - have had the same thing happen when hand-binding books.

One thing I don't get is the need for the printed linen paper - surely book cloth is more durable (even if it is just an accessory) and comes in many different shades... you could probably even dye it. While I like the outcome, it seems a bit odd. Lovely use of chipboard for the cover though.

Very nice, appropriate vintage aesthetic!

At first I saw the $60/book cost, but then saw how it turned out, wow. It definitely looks like a 6-figure job. Awesome work!

Looks like a dream project. Beautifully done.

Love the scrapbook concept with all the old pics, nice job.

What a nice and clever way to showcase 50 years of achievement. Sorry to hear about the glue mishap, but I'm sure the end justified whatever little accidents were met with during the means. Very well executed. Would love to have a copy to look at :)

Hi everyone and thank you for your comments! To answer Alison's question about why we used paper for the spine instead of binding tape, it was because of a few reasons. The binding tape was much more expensive and the books were already at such a high cost. Also, the printer wasn't familiar with how it would work over the chip board - if the corners would peel up, etc. And the last reason being that we wanted to get a perfect match to the PMS 109 so the color was consistent. I agree that it would've been more ideal to use binding tape, but that was the only thing we had to compromise on so I'm a happy girl :)

I love the design - different spreads that give it texture from its context. The paper and printing style is so appropriate for this. Nice job. Congrats.