Bookbuilders of Boston announced "The Smaller Majority" as the winner of the "Best in Show" award at the 49th Annual New England Book Show on March 15 at a gala dinner at the Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston, MA. "The Smaller Majority,"published in 2005 by Harvard University Press and printed by DS Graphics of Lowell, MA, was chosen by ballots cast by over 300members and guests attending the show.
In the New England Book Show catalog, the judges described "The Smaller Majority" this way:
"Spectacular use of Hexachrome printing--very well suited to the subject matter, as greens and oranges pop off the page. Realism at its most profound and magnificent."
John Walsh, the Director of Design and Production at Harvard University Press, called it "the best printing we have ever done."
The book was chosen from a field of over 40 other titles hand-picked by the Book Show Jury for inclusion in the show. "The Smaller Majority" stood out with over 450 stunning photographs printed in the innovative six-color Hexachrome® process. DS Graphics' Victor Curran explained that Hexachrome makes it possible to print a much wider spectrum of color than traditional four-color process.
"Hexachrome has been around since the mid-90s, when Pantone Inc. introduced it," Curran said. "It's mainly used for retail packaging and point-of-sale advertising, but this is the first large-scale book to take advantage of its ability to print brilliant pictures with incredible detail." The book gives a close-up look at the species that abound in the tropics, including frogs, insects, and lizards. The author and photographer, Harvard entomologist Piotr Naskrecki, traveled to five continents over a period of several years to photograph these tiny, elusive creatures in their natural environments. Dr. Naskrecki worked with digital cameras, so his benchmark for color was the way his pictures look on a properly calibrated RGB monitor. Pantone designed Hexachrome to reproduce almost the entire RGB color gamut. As Curran puts it, "We can do on press almost anything you see on your computer screen."
Because the photographs were created with digital cameras, DS Graphics used an all-digital workflow coordinated with the book's designer, Tim Jones of Harvard University Press. Jones also designed the book's black cloth case binding, manufactured by Acme Bookbinding of Charlestown, MA.
Harvard University Press has contracted DS Graphics to print a second Hexachrome book “100 Caterpillars,” to be published in the spring of 2006.