Tasked with generating buzz for The Incredible Hulk, film magazine Empire and its publisher Bauer rose to the challenge with an award winning 3D cover.

Following up the previous Hulk film, which had widely been considered a disappointment, Empire hoped to create excitement about the sequel. The result earned the publisher a PPA Magazine Production Award for Creative Production Initiative of the Year within a Publishing Company. 

The aim was to create what Bauer and the PPA believe to be “the world’s first fully 3D cover”, with the film’s eponymous hero bursting out of the magazine’s 250,000 copies. The 3D effect required a printed, formed plastic to be used, which would be attached to the cover before shipping the magazines, soldier-packed, to retailers.

Production manager Alex Jones had the responsibility of delivering the creative vision, and she says: “The first thing to do was to talk to the supplier, Vinalith, and find out if we could do it within the production schedule.”

As well as the question of substrates, the idea presented both timing and technical challenges from the beginning. “We did have to adapt our schedule for the cover artwork especially,” says Jones. “It was for the June issue, which had an on-sale date of 24th April 2008, so the cover artwork had to be finished two months prior to our usual press date.”

Testing was required before settling on which plastic could best achieve the desired result, and on which kind of tape and process would be most reliable for fixing it to the cover. “The choice of plastics was limited as there are only a few that you can actually thermoform,” Jones says. “In the end, the product we used was a 250 micron semi-rigid PVC.”

Fixing the plastic to the cover was done by hand, as this actually proved a more reliable method of ensuring it remained square, compared with mechanical means. A non-silicone-based UV varnish was also applied to the magazine cover, as this aided adhesion of the tape holding the PVC.

According to Jones, potential difficulties were also posed when it came to printing on the plastic itself, as “thermoformed PVCs aren’t usually printed, especially with 100% print coverage”. As a result, she says: “Vinalith used specialist UV inks and varnishes with an amazing amount of heat resistance in them so they don’t break away from the plastic, especially when they are stretched and moulded.”

The cover, of course, was just one part of the magazine, although production of the editorial and ad pages probably seemed like a breeze in comparison. “The rest of the issue was done as per our schedule,” says Jones. “Printing and binding was extremely tight, however, and Cooper Clegg was amazingly accommodating: they managed to get the magazines out quicker than usual, allowing the hand finishing to be done over four days.”

As well as receiving the PPA award, there was no shortage of recognition for Bauer’s achievements from the publishing and film industries. Amongst hundreds of emails cited in its award entry, Bauer highlighted feedback from Universal Pictures, producer of The Incredible Hulk, whose head of press commented that theirs was “simply the best magazine cover we’ve ever seen”.