Particular: Limited edition Keaykolour notebooks by Atelier Bulk
Founded in 2015 in Bordeaux, Atelier Bulk is a printer specialising in handcraft finishing techniques such as embossing, hot-foil stamping and sewing. Over the years, they have become a major player in France and have also gained recognition outside of France and earned the trust of many luxury brands. From Fashion Week invitations to stationery and packaging, Atelier enjoys challenging themselves with the most demanding print projects.
Founded in 2015 in Bordeaux, Atelier Bulk is a printer specialising in handcraft finishing techniques such as embossing, hot-foil stamping and sewing. Over the years, they have become a major player in France and have also gained recognition outside of France and earned the trust of many luxury brands. From Fashion Week invitations to stationery and packaging, Atelier enjoys challenging themselves with the most demanding print projects.
Bold, exciting, vibrant and versatile. Keaykolour combines quality and innovation in a unique collection of papers and boards.
A passion for handcraft challenges
Atelier's founder, Yann Cloutier, decided to create a special pack of notebooks that would reflect their skills and nouse.
Looking at the individual and diverse ways notebooks are used by people, including drawing, writing lists, documenting travels and inspirations. Yann challenged himself to create a notebook that would be unique, it was named Particular.
4 shades of Keaykolour have been used for the project: Sequoia, Biscuit, Deep Black and Cobblestone
Atelier Bulk partnered with Antalis for the paper (Keaykolour for the covers and Olin Rough for the inside pages), Foilco for the foils and H+M for the tools. Mixing the various shades of papers and foils together with a variety of micro embossing patterns, 32 combinations were created. With 10 printed pieces in each design, a total of 320 were produced; each one was inserted into a metallic sleeve pack including an introductory card, a Japanese bond notebook and a notepad.
8 different designs made with H+M microembossing tools have been used with various foils from FoilCo before being laminated onto the cover.
Pénélope Domecq, production manager at Atelier Bulk and founder of Penne Studio
Pénélope Domecq, Bordeaux – France, is the head of production at Atelier Bulk and also an artistic director. With great expertise, Penelope shares with us her inspiration for the notebooks and the challenges of production.
Antalis: Hello Pénélope! Can you share with us the brief you had from Yann and your inspiration for the project?
Pénélope :
Atelier is very pleased to be supported on its creative projects. There was actually no brief for the project, together with Yann we are working hand in hand to achieve the most creative and exquisite pieces of print. We wanted to create a notebook that combined high aesthetics together with being really handy/practical. The aim was also to showcase our printing and finishing know-how while having fun creating a beautiful object.
The use each individual has for their notebook inspired me, so I wanted to create a set that would reflect that uniqueness. The project was brought to life thanks to the multiple converting options we have within Atelier, and also thanks to our partners who like to support us on challenging projects.
I wanted the overall design to be uncluttered and refined, in order to highlight the achievements with dies and foils, including micro-embossing, blind-embossing and curved-stamping. The resulting Particular notebook is symbolic for us as it demonstrates the years of investment and research for us to be able to offer such a variety of embellishing techniques in-house.
Antalis: How did you select the papers and the foils?
Pénélope:
Recently we have extended our Bulk Classic offer with Keaykolour and since we had these papers in stock, there were colours that we really wanted to play with! So this project was a great excuse to make our own selection, based on our personal tastes.
The selection of foils from Foilco was pretty easy and obvious: as soon as we found the perfect match, we selected it and added more combinations in order to create a diversity of notebooks.
Antalis: You have used micro-embossing, how did you come up with this selection of patterns?
Pénélope:
The combination of the embossing effects was not simple as we couldn’t really simulate what the end results would be once the pattern is applied on the papers and foils. So we had to do several trials and most importantly, trust ourselves.
But in the end, the two designs combined with the different foils and papers offer a great assortment of 32 sets which we are very proud of (and actually each of us has our preferred design).
Antalis: The notebooks are exquisite, and so very well produced one might think it was an easy job! Can you share with us the most challenging parts of the production?
Pénélope:
It was definitely not an everyday production. First we needed to prepare 7 brass dies, so I needed to be very careful on all the design details! We also had to think of all the potential problems and most importantly, to foresee each step of the production! For the sewed notebook, I wanted the micro-embossed card – which is laminated on a debossed part of the paper – to be flush with the cover.
We then had to find the right paper and the right debossing tool to ensure the result on the cover would be perfectly flat. It is a very meticulous project where our careful hands sewed the notebooks and laminated the microembossing on each notebook cover. But handcraft is what we love to do!
