J R Freeman & Son

Briefly

For more than 100 years, JR Freeman & Sons in Cardiff, Wales was the centre of cigar-making in Britain, producing iconic brands such as Manikin and Hamlet. We were asked to produce a brochure design to demonstrate the company’s capabilities to potential international clients.

What we did

This could easily have become a purely heritage communication but, after we completed a 2 day on-site direction of photography, it became clear to us that the company’s most valuable asset was its workforce, which we decided to use as the brochure’s underlying theme. An unconventional landscape format and unexpected use of colour, created a brochure that showed a vibrant, progressive and modern company. Cigar-making tradition was recalled through an embossed, textured paper cover, the company’s branding printed on a separate label, hand-applied during the finishing process.