When Sappi approached 50k to think through how to reintroduce their recently unsurfaced archives, the creative agency jumped at the opportunity to honor the paper company’s rich heritage. When the carefully packaged books and artifacts arrived, the team broke out the white gloves and traveled through time.

Having designed and developed Sappi’s education, training and consulting website, Sappi etc., 50k created a space that went back as far as the 1960s, scanning historical treasures using optical character recognition so they’d be fully searchable. The team took equal care digitizing the newly unearthed archives, which were also uploaded to the Sappi etc. website. It was an incredible journey bringing Sappi’s archives to life in The Reflected Works, a curated collection of Advertising, Promotion and Education work from 1910–1969. The collection launched at the 27th Veritiv Paper Show with a print promotion that featured curated photographs and samples from the collection printed over a chrome silver ink flood.

Straight from the vault, The Reflected Works—both online and in-print—highlights some of the most favorite archives, offering a glimpse into not just Sappi’s heritage but the entire industry’s. By looking back through the pages, there is a deeper understanding of the power of print, reminding audiences that paper endures and is a part of everyday life. The result is a commitment to honoring paper and all its qualities, looking for new and even more inventive ways to elevate it and its use.