The Art Directors Club (ADC) is an international non-profit
organization uniting creative professionals active in advertising,
design and interactive media worldwide. Founded in New York in 1920,
ADC promotes the highest standards of design excellence and integrity.
It is especially focused on encouraging students and young
professionals who are entering the industry.
The organization
had worked with Moleskine to create notebooks for its Annual Awards and
Hall of Fame competition, so it already knew how much a custom edition
could benefit its communications strategy. This time around, ADC wanted
to create something special for its Young Guns awards, a competition
for new talent aged 30 and under working in visual communications and
graphic design.
The Young Guns 5 notebook turned out to be one of the most ambitious
personalization projects Moleskine has handled to date. ADC wanted to
maximize the potential of the notebook, to create limited edition
notebook that would comprise a catalogue of the Young Guns 5
competition. It presented Moleskine with a must-have list of elements
that were to be part of the design. More than 60 artists were being
profiled; each would get a few pages in the notebook for their bio and
images of their work. Full-bleed presentation was also a must, as well
as some extra blank pages for making notes or sketches.
The Moleskine teams in New York and Italy worked together on the ADC
notebook, carefully considering how the physical characteristics of
different Moleskine notebooks could be used to the advantage of the
project. For instance, the pages in the notebooks have a slightly
off-white color, and both sides wondered whether this was the best
foundation for the ADC images. Moleskine test printed several of the
designs to ensure that the coloring was acceptable, only to discover
that the Young Guns' work looked fantastic on Moleskine paper. To
accommodate ADC's request for extra blank pages, a separate, detachable
cahier was included inside the notebook, adding even more value to the
final piece.
Moleskine presented its basic ideas for the shape of the notebook to
ADC and both sides polished them together. ADC handled the design of
the inside of the project. Alan Dye of Kate Spade created the final
concept for ADC. We suggested three different treatments for exterior
of the notebook, settling on matte black foil debossing, which really
brought out the design of the cover graphic, which was the logo for the
competition.
Copies of the Young Guns notebooks were given to competition winners,
causing an enthusiastic commotion among the young designers. They loved
the fact that unlike a coffee table-sized catalogue, they could take
the Moleskine with them to parties and events in order to show off
their winning designs.
The Young Guns 5 notebook turned out to be one of the most ambitious
personalization projects Moleskine has handled to date. ADC wanted to
maximize the potential of the notebook, to create limited edition
notebook that would comprise a catalogue of the Young Guns 5
competition. It presented Moleskine with a must-have list of elements
that were to be part of the design. More than 60 artists were being
profiled; each would get a few pages in the notebook for their bio and
images of their work. Full-bleed presentation was also a must, as well
as some extra blank pages for making notes or sketches. 
Moleskine presented its basic ideas for the shape of the notebook to
ADC and both sides polished them together. ADC handled the design of
the inside of the project. Alan Dye of Kate Spade created the final
concept for ADC. We suggested three different treatments for exterior
of the notebook, settling on matte black foil debossing, which really
brought out the design of the cover graphic, which was the logo for the
competition.
Copies of the Young Guns notebooks were given to competition winners,
causing an enthusiastic commotion among the young designers. They loved
the fact that unlike a coffee table-sized catalogue, they could take
the Moleskine with them to parties and events in order to show off
their winning designs.
