Super Bowl 51 will kick off on Sunday in Houston. Many football fans here in Wisconsin are still miffed that it will be the Atlanta Falcons, and not the Green Bay Packers, representing the NFC in the game against the New England Patriots.
But Wisconsin will be represented in its own way in the stadium, and in the homes of hundreds of thousands of football fans around the world. This year’s physical Super Bowl game program was printed in Lomira, Wisconsin, by Quad/Graphics.
The Wisconsin company has, for more than 20 years, printed the Super Bowl game program.
Bob Lang, senior customer account manager for Quad/Graphics, says the company's rapid turnaround time makes the Super Bowl program publication process unique.
A three-person creative content team from publisher H.O. Zimman embeds itself at the Lomira plant and turns the program around within hours of the conference championships.
"You've got to wait for the games to unfold on that Sunday, and then you have to, as fast as you can, get it [the program] printed, get it bound and get it shipped, and that obviously takes time," Lang explains. "The clock is ticking, and literally as soon as that final buzzer goes on that second game, it's like hustle, hustle, hustle. It really has to happen."
Thanks to technological advancements in film, pressing speeds and binding equipment, Lang says Quad/Graphics's throughput has improved by 50% over the past 20 years.
He also attributes the success of production day to the Lomira plant team's efficiency and expertise. "They know about how long it should take the department ahead of them to do what they got to do. So that flow is just kind of natural with the amount of excitement that the plant has surrounding the game and producing the program."
This year’s program clocks in at almost 300 pages, and is on newsstands now.
