Graphic detail
In the not so distant past, people in business assessed each other by visible signs of success, conformity and credibility – your car, your office, how you dressed, your club membership...
Nowadays it’s your website that gives you the confidence to walk into a business meeting with your head held high knowing your brand speaks for you.
That’s how Director at MC2, Maria Chapman, a print broker with more than 30 years in the business, feels about her recently launched brand and website by Graphic Detail. It’s a website that speaks to the heart of what she does, which is ‘Print Coloured by Experience’.
“To feel great about your website literally changes everything,” says Maria. “I feel like I can do anything.”.
Designed by Ross Blakely and the team at Graphic Detail, the new look reimagines what print broking can be. The identity draws on the idea that paper is not passive because paper is not passive, it creases, it curls, it folds, and it bends. It becomes form, it holds knowledge, and it speaks.
For Graphic Detail the challenge was to express the depth of MC2 founder Maria’s print expertise, including her problem-solving, engineering complex packaging, navigating offshore production and delivering print finishes that elevate the brands they represent.
Ross and his team created a brand that turned out to be a typographic system inspired by paper itself, a series of letterforms that look and feel like paper in motion. Shapes that fold and move like print does in real life.
“The concept started with a question,” says Ross. “If I curl a piece of paper, does it form a C? Could a font be based on paper’s behaviour? From there, we looked at how colour and shape could represent Maria’s deep knowledge of print and how everything that is committed to paper carries weight, memory, and meaning.”
Photographer Chris Street from Up&Up captured the tactile elegance of print in action, using imagery of design packaging, journals, games and more to tell a vibrant and colourful story about MC2’s work.
The copy, by Iron Road’s Colin Kennedy, is plain-spoken confidence. It’s direct, clear and infused with Maria’s voice.
The homepage opens with a simple truth many clients feel: “You’ve got a complex print or packaging job that needs doing, but you’re worried because there’s a lot riding on getting a stellar finish, and you have no idea where to begin.”
The site positions MC2 as the go-to team for high-stakes printing jobs. Everything from packaging, books, board games, branded material and more. Maria’s independence is part of the appeal.
“Because we don’t own machines, we’re not trying to fill a print plant,” she says. “Our only job is to find the right process, partner and finish to make your job shine.”
The new site is a quiet but confident statement of who MC2 is and why it matters. A brand, like the paper it works with, is built to last.
