Mercedes Waratah and M&M Binders are cashing in on the popularity of rock legends The Rolling Stones, producing 12,000 copies of a souvenir book to commemorate their sold-out Australian concert tour.
The book follows the band’s celebration of fifty years in rock and roll, a memento for its October and November ‘On Fire’ Australian tour.
The oversize, case-bound volume features glossy photos, quotes from the band and information about the tour.
Mercedes Waratah printed 12,000 copies for the Australian, New Zealand and Asian legs of the 2014 tour, then passed it to M&M for binding.
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Lenny Todisco, managing director of the Melbourne binder, says it had to be turned around in a hurry.
“Meeting so-called impossible deadlines is nothing new for anyone in the binding and finishing trade, because we always need to try and help the client by making up any time lost earlier in the production process,” he says.
“We specialise in the size and type of work that other suppliers simply cannot handle.”
Although the company has produced many volumes for music tours and arts event, Todisco says the Stones book has gone down particularly well in the workshop.
“That one is a bit special. You could say it just proves that we are still on fire here – and now we are looking forward to what 2015 has in store,” he says.
Todisco says it is the latest in a series of borderline impossible jobs M&M has pulled of recently, the a book made for the Melbourne National Gallery’s ‘Melbourne Now’ exhibition being another example.
He says the sewing was so tricky other binders had advised the client that ‘it could not be done’.
While the size of most of the 280 pages, printed by Adams Print in Geelong, were 280 x 210mm, ten eight-page sections were shorter, at 180 x 135mm, creating a stepped effect at the page edge.
Greg Rowe from Adams Print says, “Like most printers, we outsource some of our specialised finishing to trade houses.
“For this job M&M Binders was the ideal choice as they not only had the equipment, expertise and experience, but really relished the challenge of making it work.
“The results were outstanding and the client was delighted.”
M&M also got satisfaction from putting together a weighty tome for Geoscience Australia called Shaping a Nation – a Geology of Australia, printed by Paragon Printers in Canberra.
The hard cover encyclopaedia measures 300 x 258mm and has 584 pages, end papers and a dust jacket – making it 48mm thick, which M&M says will test the outer limits of most finishing equipment.
Mark Brown from Paragon Printers says: “The sheer size of this publication made it difficult to handle but M&M Binders was able to section sew and case bind it.”
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