Fine Arts Engraving

We met Fine Arts Engraving at the very first Legal Marketing Association (née NALFMA) conference in 1985 in San Francisco. Joe Fontana, Gil Voltaggio and Bill Fitzgerald were manning the booth across from ours. Since that time our two companies have grown very close based on a deep abiding respect for the quality of each other's work.
When Fine Arts opened its Washington operations, Joe asked us to design an announcement. The series of cards on the right all featured contemporary engraved portraits of George Washington held together with a transparent belly band.

We created a poster for the opening day of Fine Arts' new Washington plant, converting images of employees into a plate block of stamps that was tipped on. It is a tour de force of the engraver's art-with 13 colors engraved cheek by jowl. The next year, the piece won Best in Show from the Engraved Stationery Manufacturer's Association.

Because so much of our work was represented in the constant stream of awards given to Fine Arts, they asked us to design an announcement for their clients. The pop-up on the left bore the headline, “Think of It as the Olympics of Engraving,” but the Olympic rings were swapped out for typographic “O”s from various fonts. For us, it's never just the quality of the design or copy. The quality of the idea is equally important.
The next year-the year of the newly redesigned U.S. currency-we turned the awards notice into our own currency below.

We redesigned Fine Arts' Web site, including the demo for their Web Ordering System, called FRAGOS. FRAGOS is a government style acronym that we felt would benefit from some personality. So, with just a hint of dyslexia, FRAGOS sprang to life as a frog.