Commemorative book design and production for BlueScope Steel

Note the plural throughout — Lisa confirmed there were two books, not one.

Following our photography across BlueScope's Sunshine Service Centre, we were commissioned to produce two commemorative books — a project spanning photography, design, layout, print management and production, all handled in-house by Lisa Saad, Principal Photographer at Gotham Studios Melbourne.

The brief

Mark the closure and consolidation of BlueScope Steel sites into a new location, including the transition and upgrade to the new Hallam site.

The books needed to do three things: recognise long-serving employees, document the equipment and manufacturing processes that had been maintained since the sites first opened, and preserve a record of the people, history and operations before the move.

Each book ran to approximately 50 pages, with a deliberately limited print run of around 25 to 50 copies per site.

The challenge — this was a record, not a brochure

A commemorative book marking a site closure carries weight that a marketing piece doesn't. The people receiving it had, in many cases, worked at these sites for decades. Get the tone wrong and it reads as a corporate exercise. Get it right and it becomes something people keep.

A small print run also changes the economics. With 25 to 50 copies, there's no volume to absorb an error — the design, colour proofing and print specification all have to be right the first time.

And a strong set of images doesn't automatically become a strong book. Photographs that work individually can fight each other on a spread. A book needs sequence, pacing and a narrative arc. Print adds its own constraints: colour behaves differently on paper than on screen, particularly with the greys, blues and steel tones that dominate this subject.

How we solved it

Because Lisa shot the photography herself across the full year, we knew the material intimately — which frames were hero images, which worked as quiet connective tissue, and where the gaps were. When a gap appeared during layout, we could go back and shoot for it, because the commission was still running. That's a significant advantage over working from someone else's finished archive.

We designed the layout around the story of each site — the people, the equipment, the processes — rather than around a chronological list of photos.

We managed print production end to end: stock selection, colour proofing and finishing, so what came off the press matched what was approved on screen. With a run this small, that proofing stage is where the project is won or lost.

The result

Two limited-edition books that preserve a permanent record of the sites, the equipment and the people, produced for long-serving employees and the business at a genuine moment of transition.

One extended photography commission produced two entirely different categories of deliverable: a working image library for ongoing corporate use, and a printed historical record.

Why this matters for your brand

Photography has a longer life than most brands realise. A single well-planned commission can supply a website, a recruitment campaign, an annual report and a printed book.

If your business is going through a genuine milestone — a site closure, a consolidation, an anniversary, a relocation — the photography and the printed piece should be commissioned together, not sequentially. Deciding upfront that a book is coming changes almost nothing about the shoot days, but it changes what you brief for and what you capture. Once the site is gone, you cannot go back and fill the gaps.

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Credits

Photography for BlueScope Steel shot on location by Lisa Saad, Principal Photographer at Gotham Studios Melbourne. Book design, layout and print production were also handled by Lisa Saad and the Gotham Studios Melbourne team. Gotham Studios Melbourne. We are your photographers. www.lisasaad.com · www.bluescopesteel.com.au