Why it’s important: Printers estimate production costs based on the equipment they have. Knowing the quantity determines which press to use, how much paper to buy and how long your project will take to print. It also helps them decide whether it fits their equipment, and whether they should turn down your print job or accept it but have it done elsewhere. (Virtually every printer brokers out work to other companies when they don’t have the equipment to do the job.) If it’s a 500 piece postcard printing, it may be too small for them to print economically. [click to continue…]
This project was a handful (photo by Thomas Duane)
Sometimes I get to create something that’s never been done before. That was the case when the founder of marketing communications firm Neohatch Thomas Duane, along with sports and event marketing agency Woolf Associates, asked me to help produce a 32-page, 32″ wide by 20″ tall flip book for their client FlippSports.
A flip book has pages bound together with slightly different sequential images on each page. As you flip the pages quickly, the images animate and move. FlippSports created a series of these palm-sized books highlighting plays by famous baseball players to sell as collectibles – sort of like a baseball card on steroids.
Photo by Thomas Duane
Woolf Associates, at that point a division of advertising giant Arnold & Company, had lots of experience creating product tie-ins with sports events and stars, including Flutie Flakes cereal. Neohatch also had it’s share of experience with sports marketing, guiding projects like a partnership between Campbell’s Soup and the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, as well as creating a branding strategy for WBA Heavyweight Champion John Ruiz. The goal for the giant flip book was to create excitement about the small products by getting the big one listed in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Happy National Egg Salad Day. This holiday traditionally falls on the day after Easter, when your beautifully decorated Easter eggs have suddenly morphed from being an example of amazing creativity into a food product with an expiration date.
Here are a couple of eggs we decorated at our house that I wanted to share (artistic shout [...]
The post office wants to update their booklet and self mailer design requirements to help them save money. Pay attention, or it could end up costing you.
Companies have to be smart in this economy with their marketing dollars. You have to focus on what’s most important, and not do things the same way out of habit. By being open to a new approach, you can cut costs with eroding sales.
As a graphic designer, do you design for the client or for yourself?
In the January 2009 edition of Wired Magazine, the Rants section has an item entitled “Sarcastic Letter of the Month.” Here is the excerpt:
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On New Year’s Day I sat down to watch a YouTube video entitled “Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” Pausch was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer a month before he gave this lecture on September 18, 2007. His doctors had given him three to six [...]
