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Angie Felix ByLine

Behind the Scenes
Graphic Design at Hot Off The Press

From the gorgeous detailed designs of your favorite Paper Pizazz® collage papers to the cool coordinating patterns that decorate your sarabooks™ and Cardmaker’s™ papers, there’s a lot that goes on before these treasures hit the shelves at your local craft store.

Jacie Pete is one of two Hot Off The Press graphic designers who work hard to perfect the papers that crafters have come to love. Jacie studied art at Colorado State University, owned her own business and spent some time teaching art before she came to work for Hot Off The Press in 1996.

Before the designing begins for Jacie, the first step is always the idea—Hot Off The Press’ Product Development Team formulates an overall concept for a book or line based on current and future trends, then shares the ideas with graphic designers. Jacie and teammate Kyla Cesca set to work, applying their own personal creativity to the concepts presented to them. “The designs usually develop as I go,” Jacie says. “For example, I know I’ll do a green paper, but I won’t know in advance that I’ll use checks in the pattern. Sometimes it’s hard to come up with the ideas, but other times I can finish a page in an hour. I typically have a feel for what I want when I start.” On average, it takes Jacie a half day to complete a paper from the concept stage to the approval.

When Jacie first started at Hot Off The Press, much of her work was done by hand. She would spend a lot of time drawing or painting artwork for her papers. Jacie would then scan the art and use a computer to assist with layering the images onto a background before printing. Most papers are created using this layering technique.


Jacie is known in particular for her talent in designing collage papers, a trend she created for Hot Off The Press. An example of Jacie’s collage work is shown here. For this one piece of paper from Heritage Collage Papers, Jacie had approximately 20 layers in her Photoshop document. She started with a green background, added a layer with one pattern all over, then another with a torn edge. Other layers include two additional patterns and several screens or masks with all working together until they combine into the beautiful design you see here. The multiple layers and shades give the paper depth and interest. “High-powered computers allow us to do this,” Jacie admits. Believe it or not, many of the papers she designs lately involve even more layers—a file for one paper included over 100 layers!

As paper trends change, so does the way they are created. “Now it’s much more sophisticated than it used to be,” Jacie explained. “Not only in terms of today’s styles, but also in technology. We’ve learned so much more of what computers can do.” Today’s patterned papers are much different—more of a texture or overall pattern instead of sections of artwork. Because of these advances and trend changes, fewer of the designs are done by hand.



Though Jacie still does some drawing, it’s more focused on creating very small sections sapof what will be a pattern on a paper. For example, she’ll draw a very small section of wire mesh, then scan it and use her computer to repeat the pattern for the entire background. On this blue sapphire letters paper, each different font is a separate layer. Each of them is also airbrushed as an individual layer, then texturized individually. Each time a paper has a repeated image every individual image is a separate layer.

To keep each paper in the themed books (such as the sarabooks™ Paper Packs) coordinating, a palette of colors is selected before the book is started. After the original designs for the papers are created, the colors are double checked and printed on a special printer similar to the one Hot Off The Press’ printer uses. Once the designs are finished and approved, the papers head for the presses and finally, into your local stores.

While Jacie admits that being creative day after day and staying fresh can be difficult, she feels that she’s definitely doing what she loves—“I get to draw and create and get paid for it. It’s something I’ve loved to do my whole life.” Jacie feels it’s especially rewarding to see her papers in industry magazines and seeing just how paper crafters like you put them to use.