The requirement
Sound Performance Limited, one of our biggest clients required a specialist printing company to supply 60,000 different variations of a design that was to be used for the latest vinyl and CD release by the hugely popular Domino Recordings signing, Hot Chip.

With this huge variation required, it was essential that they engaged with a supplier that had the capability and expertise necessary to undertake such a monumental task and provide a reliable, efficient and cost effective printing service.

The solution
Requiring an experienced printed packaging company, Sound Performance Limited appointed us to manage the entire variable printing project.

Using our incredibly advanced and highly reliable HP Indigo Digital Printing Presses, we took the 501 different tones that the band’s designers had created and added a vectored pattern in the centre of each one.

Utilising the advanced printing technology the HP system offered, we altered each different pattern to ensure that each one was very slightly, almost imperceptibly different. For example, while the background tone might be a very similar shade as another vinyl sleeve or CD gatefold wallet, the patterned graphic would be positioned differently or rotated very slightly to ensure complete variation.

The results
The result was 60,000 unique variations for the vinyl sleeves and CD gatefold wallets. In the view of the designers, the multitude of possible print combinations offered a ‘true meeting of minds between man and machine.’

Matthew Cooper, one of the designers, said: “If you’re holding it in your hand, there is an illusion of movement like a Bridget Riley painting. If you were flipping through the vinyl racks at a record shop, you might find two that look really, really close in the same way as if you picked up two normal record or CD covers and looked at them and said ‘Hold on a second; this one has a fleck of dirt on it and this one has a slightly different colour because it was made at the beginning of the print run.”

HP Publication
The release caught the eye of HP, which lead to the company featuring the project in a prestigious and high end case study publication that showboated the innovative capabilities of the Indigo range.