After working on a concert program design for awhile, it was time to think about paper and ink choices. I got to look through many sets of paper sample books in the office so I spent time comparing colors, weights, and textures of each available paper. Once you really start looking, no two whites and no two beiges look the same. I started out with quite a number of possible paper choices and kept going back to narrow it down to the 2 strongest choices- heavy papers that have an unfinished texture and which are close to a snowy white, but have a slight warm glow. After that I looked through color swatches to find the exact color the title text would be printed in. I learned that in Japan, instead of Pantone colors, many printers and designers work with DIC (Dainippon Ink & Chemicals) colors. There are numerous DIC color swatch books in the office so I had a lot of fun browsing all the colors. It was also intersting that there are theme swatch books as well- like traditional Japanese colors, traditional French colors, and so on. It’s really lovely just to look at.