Quad/Graphics Adds Value With Studio Photography

Under a new, multi-year agreement, Quad/Graphics Photography Services will become L.L.Bean’s exclusive provider for studio photography. The agreement, an expansion of an existing Quad/Graphics contract, goes into effect this month and covers photography for L.L.Bean’s catalogs, including the Men’s, Women’s, Kid’s, Fly Fishing, Hunting, Traveler and Home titles, as well as its Web sites and e-commerce businesses.

As part of the partnership established by this agreement, L.L.Bean will build Studio 1912, a 16,000-sq-ft all digital photography studio in Westbrook, a Portland, Maine suburb, about 20 miles from L.L.Bean’s Freeport corporate headquarters. The Studio 1912 name reflects the year that L.L.Bean started in business. Quad/Graphics Photography Services will manage studio operations in cooperation with L.L.Bean’s Photography Operations and Creative Department.

The new studio will feature seven shooting bays, which will accommodate dozens of active sets daily.

Four bays will have full daylight photography capability. The studio also will include a fully equipped set-building shop, areas for merchandise management, a prop room, production offices, dressing rooms and hair and makeup areas.

L.L.Bean will direct the vision and creative direction while Quad/Graphics will provide staffing and technology support, according to Mark Kozlowski, Quad/Graphics director of photography. “With this contract expansion Quad/Graphics will provide the best talent and technology, and together with L.L.Bean’s creative direction we will create a best-in-class photography studio which will be a model for the catalog industry,” Kozlowski said.

Quad/Graphics is the exclusive printer and premedia provider for L.L.Bean catalogs under a contract that began in January 2008. Quad/Graphics prints and distributes all L.L.Bean catalogs from its gravure printing plants in Martinsburg, W.Va.; Oklahoma City, Okla.; and Lomira, Wis. Catalog premedia production is managed by a dedicated Quad/Graphics prepress team located at L.L.Bean headquarters in Freeport and supported by the Quad/Graphics Imaging Services Center in Braintree, Mass. The Quad/Graphics premedia presence in Freeport also included an in-house photo studio that has handled Web site and select catalog photography since 2008. The photography volume from the in-house studio will move to the Westbrook-based studio.

According to Joel Quadracci, Quad/Graphics chairman, president and CEO, “Quad/Graphics provides L.L.Bean with efficient and cost-effective production solutions starting with photography and prepress through printing and distribution, and this new photography arrangement is testament to the mutual success we have achieved.”