Old Print x New Print, Promotional Materials for AIGA Boston and HPG Print, 2025.

In June of 2025, AIGA Boston helped promote and present a hands-on educational event at the Museum of Printing in Haverhill, Massachusetts.1 The Old Print x New Print event was sponsored by HPG (Harvard Pinnacle Group) Print, a Waltham, MA-based printer that (locally at least) is known for pushing the boundaries of printing process technologies. This event showcased new approaches and capabilities that allow designers, clients, printers, and print producers to virtually preview various printing effects and technologies (embossing, textured and tactile effects, varnish, foil stamping, and other effects).

Harvard Pinnacle Group was first established in 1991. The company started as a Macintosh training facility, and over time its training and consulting business transformed into a print manufacturing business.2 At the start of the project, the staff from HPG brought me in for an educational tour and gave me a sense of what capabilities we could possibly explore and experiment with for materials to help promote the OP x NP event. Then, over a series of visits, Greg Wallace from HPG took a few test files I delivered and created experiments and prototypes using a combination of virtual software from Taktiful Solutions3 and printed tests at HPG.

The promotional materials use a mix of raw CMYK colors, x-shapes, duotone photography of the museum, and bold typography (mostly the old-school typeface Compacta).4 Several projects I’ve worked on use this “make ready”5 style inspired by my early days covering large-run offset printing press checks. This rich, overlapping graphic style is also strongly inspired by the work my fellow Boston-based designer, Clif Stoltze6—especially his work in the 1990s. The promotional series materials were delivered at a series of AIGA Boston events leading up to OP x NP 2025, including an AIGA Boston event hosted at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art.

Footnotes

  1. See: “Museum of Printing.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 10 Jul 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Printing. ↩︎
  2. InfoTrends. HPGprint Uses Special Effects to Grow Business. Xerox, 2016, www.xerox.com/digital-printing/latest/X80CS-12U.PDF. ↩︎
  3. Taktiful. Taktiful Software Solutions. 2026, www.taktiful.com/. Accessed 26 Aug. 2026. ↩︎
  4. See: “Compacta (typeface).” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 12 May 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compacta_(typeface). ↩︎
  5. “Makeready.” PrintWiki, the Free Encyclopedia of Print, 2026, http://www.printwiki.org/Makeready. Accessed 26 Aug. 2026. ↩︎
  6. Stoltze Design Group. “Clif Stoltze.” Stoltze Design Group, 2026, www.stoltze.com/bio/clif-stoltze/. Accessed 26 Aug. 2026. ↩︎

FILED IN: Graphic Design


IMAGES
Promotional Materials for the 2025 Old Print x New Print Event