Colenso wanted gold plates. Real, polished gold. They did not have the budget for real, polished, gold.

So we went looking. After a serious amount of research and running around, we landed on vacuum metalization. It's a specialised process that deposits a microscopically thin layer of metal onto a surface in a vacuum chamber. The result is a mirror-finish gold that photographs like the real thing. On a ceramic plate, the effect is ridiculous.

Then, on top of the vacuum-metalized base, we applied actual 24-karat gold leaf to the text and logo. So you've got two types of gold working together: the metalized surface carrying the main colour, and real gold leaf doing the fine detail. The two finishes are close enough to read as one, but different enough that the lettering has its own weight.

Super technical, super fun.