It’s quite hard as a design engineer to describe the feeling you get when approached by a brand such as Bugatti. It’s even harder to describe how it feels if Bugatti has partnered with legendary yacht design and build brand Palmer Johnson and then comes knocking at your door. Think back to when you were about 6 or 7 years old, on the eve of your birthday or perhaps even Christmas and there might be a similarity in the level of excitement to expect.
Bugatti has always been a staple of ingenuity and innovative design, with a legacy harking back to the famous 30’s era of motorsport during which Bugatti was fending off the legendary Bentley Boys at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Palma Johnson, on the other hand, is the designer of fantasy. They build yachts not just for the island hop between Ibiza Town and Palma, they build dream yachts so that on arrival in Port Hercules, Monaco you don’t just end up blending in with one of the other superyachts in the harbour. They produce not only a yacht, they produce a reaction, that reaction is people turning their heads to stare in awe…
So of course when Design Centre Monaco was asked to provide promotional design support for their new co-designed flagship motorboat, The Bugatti Ninette 66, there was not only excitement in the air, but also an overwhelming sense of ‘these are some big old shoes to fill’. Palma Johnson pioneered a carbon fibre build and the yacht was to showcase next to the Chiron. Needless to say, we accepted the challenge and got underway with our work.
If the figures above are anything to go by, our final product had to be pretty spectacular. The biggest challenge was to create something that the potential client would want to pick up and take a few minutes out of their hectic schedule to look through. No pressure, ‘ey? It was a labour of love, a few bleary-eyed wake ups (to say the least) and a fusion of the latest embossing and print techniques to create something that the reader’s eyes would dance over in delight.
Introducing our work for the Bugatti Ninette 66.
No expense was spared when designing and producing the Ninette 66 promotional book, it was after all sent to all the Veyron owners in the Bugatti database… I’m sure the Fedex bill didn’t come cheap.
Details: We used a silver foil to wrap the cover and over spine which was over 45cm in width! We then used bespoke embossed leather endpapers to match the yacht interior and the pages were ‘lay-flat’ which means there was no seam, just one continuous image. This was deemed the perfect way to display all the important graphics and photos throughout the book. You don’t want to lose details on the spine. To finish we used a lacquered cover including a Bugatti custom blue colour print, whilst mixed laminates alternated between soft touch for interior pages and silk for exteriors.
