160.000 different photos decorate the titles of the magazine Cicero’s December issue. Additionally, about 50 million photos altogether are displayed on the titles’ backgrounds, and 160.000 different advertisements of a car manufacturer adorn the magazines’ backs. The slim spine has been individualised as well by using for each issue a small strip from the monumental “Rhine Picture” by the photographer Stephan Kaluza from Duesseldorf. He had marched alongside the river Rhine and taken photos, out of which he finally made a panorama with the length of 4 km. Thus, every reader gets a completely unique issue, which is even numbered severally.

One of the 160.000 "Pictures of the year", which decorate the title of Cicero's end-of-year issue. The motive 78900 shows a cross with the Cologne Cathedral in the background. About 50 million small photos altogether are furthermore displayed on the covers.

„We have eventually created something, which has not existed so far. Cicero also demonstrates how exciting print can be in our time, which is normally so much shaped by electronics”, says Martin Paff, CEO of Ringier Publishing GmbH.

In the magazine’s unusual campaign, the trend and future researcher Matthias Horx recognises a vanguard society trend: „mass customisation”. This tendency to personalise and individualise printed matters has been recognised by Reflex Mill some time ago. Thus, they developed the silverpapers range of special paper for digital printing. silver digital has been designed especially for being used on HP Indigo digital printers. And since this project has been printed on HP Indigo machines, silver digital was the first choice for this special Cicero issue. The paper allows high quality prints with constant sharp images and brilliant colour reproduction.

The covers of the magazine have been digitally printed on the paper silver digital.

The idea of individualising the magazine was even more enhanced, when 11.000 decision makers from politics, economy, media and marketing found a copy in their letter boxes, which showed their own picture. Additionally, the readers have the possibility to order a copy showing their personal title photo. However, those unique copies are limited to 500 altogether.

Several partners supported Ringier Publishing in carrying out this project: the news agency Reuters, Hewlett-Packard, Adobe, CeWe Color, Reflex Mill, the printers Neef+Stumme, the finisher Thomas Glawion, and the litho partner Appel Grafik.

Further information (in German only) can be obtained at www.cicero.de/160000bilder.

160.000 unique items: the covers of Cicero's December 2007 issue.

Interview with Martin Paff, CEO of Ringier Publishing GmbH

Mr Paff, what inspired you to carry out this special project?

• In the beginning there was a broken coffee machine and three days of upset discussion among the employees, how this biggest of all catastrophes in human history could be handled. I then tried to refocus our energy on really important matters and on unusual projects.
  The total individualisation of a magazine title in a noteworthy circulation was given as an answer to the quickly asked question, what feature in print could still be uncommon at all. That meant 160.000 issues in our case.
  And as we finally realised, that this hadn’t been done before worldwide, we knew what we wanted to carry out in the following months.
  

In his article „The me-volution“ the trend and future researcher Matthias Horx speaks about the vanguard society trend of „mass customisation“. What do you think about this development?

• Well, it is the trend researchers who are responsible for future matters. For now, let's leave aside the question of whether or not mass customisation is possible already in the internet. Print is certainly not the pioneer here, simply because the technology is quite expensive and the applications are limited. But I am quite confident, that from 2008 we will experience personalised print matters more often in the premium segment. And if with this issue we could give a little starting shot for this development, I would be happy.

In what way is Cicero going to stay abreast of this trend in the future?

• We are already thinking about products in our marketing environment, that allow for personalised communication with information multipliers. We will certainly not individualise the whole magazine every month now, but from flying to the moon, Teflon pans remained after all.

Such individualised printing matters can only be made with digital printing. How do you judge the quality of digital printing compared to traditional printing methods?

• The quality is fantastic! We had extensive measurements of the colour profile as well as proofs, and not only the very high requirements of Cicero were met, but also those of our customer BMW. Because we had prepared the 160.000 BMW motives in representation of our customer. And in automotive industry, especially regarding BMW, there are probably the highest requirements on quality printing.

Have you carried out digital printing projects before?

• No, we were novices.

The paper silver digital has been used for printing the end-of-year edition. Why did you choose this paper?

• We needed a high quality paper with high stability in printing and finishing as well as superior image quality. After all, the project had to bear any comparison with quality offset printing. For the subsequent UV varnishing of the digitally printed sheets, we did even more paper tests, which was good insofar as we were able to choose the more stable UV silk screen varnishing afterwards.

What piece of advice would you give to somebody who wants to carry out such projects in digital print?

• Our conclusion is that – when coming from the premium offset world – one has to probe everything thoroughly, since there are some peculiarities, which are manageable, but only when they are considered actively. Standardisation is not as far yet as we had wished. For such a huge project as Cicero’s end-of-year edition you have to have expert know-how in the publishing house as well.

Photos: Andrej Dallmann, Cicero