Work Live: Inspiration for the digital future in a real printed book

Ricoh is a unique company. Not only for its product portfolio which ranges from clickable paper to production inkjet systems, but also because of the way the company uses soft-selling to slowly, but surely increase brand awareness and their market share. An example of this marketing technique is the new book Work Live. A book produced with the aim to inspire clients and prospects with examples of new ways of working. Various people, from typeface aficionado Ruud de Wild to web-to-print entrepreneur of the year 2014, Marco Aarnink, share their vision of the communication industry and how to be successful in it. Ricoh clients share their experiences with Ricoh products and services in this beautifully designed, printed and bound book. Definitely worth a read and it can be acquired free of charge via this link. You do need to register and share your details with Ricoh, but that´s a low price to pay for such a beautiful book. I do have a few minor issues. The book shows how difficult the colour red is for a printer, with variations from Ricoh´s warm red to a less successful brick red. The red of the box is different form the red of the book. This may be an attempt by Ricoh to show which parts have been printed in offset and which are digital prints from the Ricoh Pro VC 60000. If so, it would have been nice to read about it, unless Ricoh is challenging the reader to find this out by its self. This same reader also finds out that the book is not in landscape as the cover suggests: perhaps an attempt by the designer to draw attention to the contents. The personalisation of the address wrapper has been beautifully done, but I would have liked to be addressed as Rob van den Braak or Mr van den Braak, not Mr Robert van den Braak, but that is just my preference.