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Boston Magazine Cover Design: Moving Tribute, Powerful Print

 

Boston Magazine Cover

Boston Magazine: www.bostonmagazine.com, Cover image by Mitch Feinberg

 

Sometimes an image captures the heart and emotions of a nation. Even in a world of film, video, 3D imaging and iMax movie experiences, a single still frame frozen in time can speak in a unique, powerful way for people with a power that other media cannot duplicate. Boston Magazine has created such an image that is both a moving tribute to the tragic bombings in Boston and a telling demonstration of the enduring power of design and the printed image.

Boston Magazine produced a cover image in response to the Marathon bombings in that city which seems to be an overnight sensation, currently making the rounds on social media. The heart shaped design composed of shoes from actual Boston Marathon runners visually tells the story of hope and endurance behind the experience of the bombings. All the major networks have reported on the image and its creation as a top news story. The powerful design will be printed not only as a magazine cover, but also as a poster with proceeds going to The One Fund – Boston. If you are interested in obtaining a poster of your own and thereby contributing, Boston Magazine says, “Please send us an email at bmagdigital@gmail.com if you would like more information about the posters once they’re available.”

Yes, many of us will experience the image digitally as it permeates the culture through social media. But the printed magazine cover and the subsequent demand for a poster bring the image into the tactile world as a keepsake. Great design in a cover image can produce a print edition that becomes a lasting keepsake for many. Even in an increasingly digital world, print retains the power to influence and communicate in a unique way.

Below are a couple of other memborable cover images memorializing the events.

Time published a special “tablet-only” edition with the cover image below. You can download it here. (photo: Bill Hoenk)Tablet only verison of TIme Cover

 

The New Yorker’s “Shadow Over Boston” issue features the artwork of Eric Drooker: New Yorker cover for the boston bombings

 

Donate to The One Fund – Boston here to help those affected by the Boston bombings. The One Fund – Boston donation site

Printers understand communication and design. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design, signage, apparel and integrated marketing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Shop our full ImageSmith catalog online here. We can work with you to find the best option to suit your needs. Please note, prices in online catalog do not include decoration, but call us for a quote at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
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Die cutting: Creative Finishing Ideas Add Power to Print

folded die cut self-mailer

Even a simple die cut can transform a bland self-mailer into a powerful marketing piece. Creative die cutting highlights the 3D nature of print – its tactile and functional nature. It also grabs attention and makes a marketing piece stand out from a stack of generic mail pieces.

The finished shape of a die cut print piece can serve an aesthetic purpose, such as making an image pop off the page or highlighting either text or a specific object. It can also provide functionality; for example, the slots in some folders which hold business cards or the curved and angled flaps on a folder which fit together as a means of closure for the piece. Another practical function for die cutting is a “pre-punched” card that is still affixed into the sheet of paper by a few, small uncut areas but can easily be popped out by the recipient to use the piece as a coupon, membership card, etc.

die cut rounded corner print pieces
Even the simplicity of a die cut rounded corner makes a print piece unique.

As a general rule, offset and digital printing (other than web-fed presses) is done on precut, rectangular pieces of paper. A special die cut press is used to trim or shape the pieces further. Think of this as similar to a cookie cutter. A die is made of metal and adjusted onto the die press at the right amount of pressure. Printed sheets are then fed into the machine and the die will both cut and/or score each sheet, leaving small attachment areas so that the finished pieces do not separate and fall down into the press. The unused portion is then scraped or weeded out and recycled, leaving the finished shaped piece.

die cut printed pieces

 

All “shaped” pieces of printed paper have been die cut by this or a similar method: envelopes with a curved flap, folders with slots for holding a buisness card or insert, and anything with rounded edges are all examples of die cut print pieces. You can creatively design your die cut to work in most any shape. Of course, the extra process adds cost to your print project, and a very complex die will cost more than one as simple as a rounded corner or curved shape.

One hint: paper manufacuturers often provide printers with sample books of their materials, showing off their products through creative, eye-catching print. These sample books and other marketing pieces often include examples of die cutting. Ask your printer to share some of these with you, or for samples of their own die cut projects. You can get a lot of inspiration from holding and inspecting the paper yourself, and perhaps it will get you excited about new options for your next print project.

Paper manufacture samples of die cutting

 

Rely on your printer for advice, inspiration and direction on your integrated marketing options. They should be able to answer all your questions – if they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
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Your Integrated Marketing Plan Needs Direct Mail

Combining direct mail with digital communication for increased ROI

Over at PrintisBig.com, you will find some eye-opening statistics about the print industry, and specifically about the power of direct mail – yes, good old-fashined direct mail, even in a digital age. While I would attribute part of the continued effectiveness of direct mail campaigns for marketing to their integration with other online and offline marketing methods, it looks like the preference of consumers for the physical nature of printed matter still pays off in increased conversion rates and marketing ROI. Also, small companies and non-profits are reaping the benefits of VDP personalization in increasingly targeted campaigns that drive up response rates as their database management matures. A couple of the stats from PrintisBig:

  • Since 2004, direct mail marketing response rates are UP 14%, while email marketing response rates are DOWN 57%.

  • In 2010, US companies increased sales through direct marketing to the tune of $702 billion.

  • Advertisers in the US spend $167 per person on direct mail, earning $2,095 worth of goods sold. That’s a 1,300% return on investment.

  • Non-profits gain 78% of their donations from direct mail.

Source: PrintisBig.com

Rather than seeing an EITHER/OR situation between direct mail and new digital alternatives, embrace the opportunities of mobile marketing, qr codes, email, social media and website e-commerce as a whole new box of tools to get our your message and/or drive sales. To abandon print and it’s proven effectiveness in that transition will prove costly!
 
Rely on your printer for advice and direction with integrated marketing. They should be able to provide you with everything from encouragement along the way to complete design, layout, copywriting, production, multi-purposing, online implmentation and distribution of your marketing outreach. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
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Myth Busting: Surprising Stats on Paper and the Environment

Busting Myths about Print and Paper

 
Paper is a sustainable, green, renewable resource – but the paper and printing industry still have to work hard to increase the realization of this in consumers’ minds. Somehow, a lingering, hazy misconception persists that “PRINT/PAPER BAD, DIGITAL GOOD” when it comes to the environment – simply not true. Perhaps a lot of this false information was perpetuated by the “help the environnment, don’t print out this email” tagline so many folks attach to their digital messages. (This myth is also debunked here.) Its is eye-opening to consider just a couple of facts about the environmental integrity of the print industry. Think about this:

The U.S. forest products industry plants more than 4 million trees… EVERY DAY!

Every day. That adds up to 1.5 billion a year. The result: the US has roughly the same number of forest acreage as we had 100 years ago, before industrialization began! Forest growth exceeds tree removal by 36% each year. (source)

Now on the other side of this equation lies the common misconception that desktop and mobile information consumption is greener than print – consider these startling facts:

A person who reads a printed newspaper daily for a year uses 20% less CO2 than one reading news online for 30 minutes each day. (source)

By 2020, data servers in the U.S. will be the single largest users of electricity. (source)

 

No one’s trying to tilt at windmills and say paper should always be used over digital communications. But it is very important to have an accurate understanding of the environmental impacts of our energy and information consumption habits throughout the communicaitons “mix.” Paper is biodegradable, sustainable and produced by an industry hard at work to maintain a healthy environment and the healthy forests that are essential to the industry’s survival.

Rely on your printer for advice and direction with your concerns about sustainability and you or your business’ commitment to being a good environmental steward. They should be able to offer you information and options for paper, ink and FSC certified products that will help you print and market in a sustainable manner. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer. The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
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Easy Custom Graphic Displays in Pop-Up Banner Stands

Graphic Display Banners

These are an easy, lightweight, affordable marketing powerhouse for any small business. Beautiful custom-branded display graphics, mounted onto low-cost, easy to carry pop-up banner stands, provide a powerful visual impact. Display them in your lobby or work area to promote services or products, then carry them along to trade shows or events for professional, powerful graphic displays. You can also switch out new banners and use the stand pop-up stand as your promotions change over time.

Above are a sample of some local banner displays that are custom branded for a customer’s own look and message. The hardware is minimal, and the entire display collapses and retreats (think window blinds) into an easy to carry case for transport and protection. You might also consider a large variety of trade show booth displays, backlit signage and other inventive pop-up graphic ideas for your next marketing effort.

Banner stand hardware

Your printer can make all of this happen — it is an easy process for the busy small business owner when you have the right printer. They should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for print, signage, apparel and integrated marketing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

 

Shop our full ImageSmith catalog online here. We can work with you to find the best option to suit your needs. Please note, prices in online catalog do not include decoration, but call us for a quote at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
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New Global Forever Stamp from the USPS: Great Design, Great Idea

the new forever stamp for international mail

Now the convenience for a Forever Stamp, like the ones we all use for domestic first class letters, is available for international mail. For $1.10, you can send a one ounce letter to any country in the world (or a 2 ounce letter to Canada), and these stamps may be used in the future no matter how much postage prices change. They may be purchased individually or in a sheet of 20 for $22.00.

The beautiful stamp was designed by Greg Breeding, art direction by William J. Gicker, and the composite satellite image of the earth was created by Leonello Calvetti. The unusual round shape is eyecatching and unique, a suitable fit for a stamp that has a unique function and carries its message around the world.

The USPS, which receives no tax dollars for operational expenses and funds itself through the sale of its products and services, is actively branching out in social media and marketing to its customers, especially stamp-collectors. Check them out on Facebook or Twitter @USPSStamps. For philatelists, or stamp collectors, the USPS has a great site called Beyond the Perf, showcasing upcoming stamps, first-day-of-issue events and other stamp-related news.

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WARNING: When spot colors are used with transparency…

spot color warning from Illustrator

The above warning is an important one! If you have used a spot or PMS color in your InDesign, Quark or Illustrator layout and then applied some type of transparency effect — drop shadows, blending modes, feathering, etc — then this warning is telling you that your file will NOT print correctly. Ignoring it can derail your print project bound for offset or digital output. You can avoid this complication with a little understanding of color definitions and conversion.

With the release of InDesign 2.0 back in 2001, Adobe integrated transparency effects directly into its layout program. New tools allowed us to apply editable transparency effects to text, graphics, and images, the result being a greatly enhanced set of design tools. PDF 1.4 debuted in Acrobat 5 at this time as the first version of PDF that supported transparency. The only catch was that most printer’s RIPs at the time were not ready to handle the transparency effects. Havoc ensued. Times have changed since then and Postscript level 3 processors and pdf workflows effectively manage the flattening of transparent files at the correct time to produce accurate output. But the conflict between spot or PMS colors and transparency lives on.

When spot colors are used with transparency

If your InDesign or Illustrator color palette is using nothing but CMYK colors, you can use transparency with no problems. If you bring in, for example, your logo or a piece of art with a predefined PMS or spot color into your layout, then you have imported that color into your palette. In turn, if you apply that to color text or graphics and use a transparency effect on them, a high resolution output from offset or digital printing will result in the object printing as a blank or with an unintended color. To further confuse the matter, the job may print fine off a desktop printer or create a pdf file that appears fine on screen. However, if you ignore the warning (seen above) that Adobe gives you when you try to save the file, your print provider will most likely NOT be able to convert the spot color to process and retain the correct transparency effect. You must convert the spot color to process in your native file and re-export to pdf.

Before being “flattened”, transparency is considered “live” and exists as an optical effect onscreen and in video. It must be flattened in order to print. At this stage, the tranparent region is broken up into smaller non-transparent sections that can then be translated by the RIP (raster image processor) into a printable image. It is, however, a complex process and trouble spots arise from the use of spot colors as discussed above, where text or vector objects overlap pixel-based objects, and possibly with the overlapping of RGB and CMYK images. You can read Adobe’s Designers Guide for Transparency and Print at this link for further reference.

So How Do I Fix My Files?

We’ve updated this blogpost with some tips on best practices and how to avoid the cost, delay and disappointment of files that print in an unacceptable way. Read it here!

 

Rely on your printer for advice and direction with any questions you have when designing files that use transparency. They should be able to provide you with the time and money saving technical advice, and work with you on file preparation and submission. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer. The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Shop our full ImageSmith catalog online here. We can work with you to find the best option to suit your needs. Please note, prices in online catalog do not include decoration, but call us for a quote at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
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Creative Print Idea: Spot UV Coating

 

Coatings applied either in or off line to a finished print piece provide some very practical benefits – protection from scratches, water or moisture damage, abrasion, fading and yellowing, and handling damage. Aesthetically, they offer varying degrees of gloss and shine, improved readability, and more. But from a design perscpective, coatings can be used creatively to enhance the actual design. Check out the spot UV coating project below for one idea, then read on for further information about all the coatings available for print.

spot UV coating adds gloss to print

UV coating adds a high degree of gloss and shine to your printed piece, but using it only on certain elements can make your piece stand out even more. On the example above, we used spot UV on the zebras stripes, select parts of the organic design element, the logo – but left the background uncoated. When the paper catches the light, these elements shine and give the illusion of depth and dimension to the card. Notice how the swirls in the green design element stand out where some are coated and some have the dull finish of the paper.

InDesign layout for spot UV coating

To prepare for print, you will need to create a separate file to designate which elements you want UV coated. (In other words, you will need to provide a four page pdf for a two page job.) Any element to receive coating needs to be shown in its exact same position on the page but as 100% black. For linked artwork, this can take a little manipulation of the vector and image files in either Illustrator or PhotoShop, but it is a fairly simple process. Just be certain that when you link your new 100% black art files for the spot UV page that they remain in the EXACT same position as on the original CMYK layout. If you allow InDesign to update a file from the Links palette to your new black element but you selected only part of that element to be 100% black (which can potentially change the overall shape of the item) then your placement can shift slightly and the UV coating will not align exactly to the printed object.

Below are the four main print coatings used in commercial printing. Each of these can be done in matte, dull or satin, and gloss finishes.

Overprint Varnish

Whether spot or full coverage, varnish adds a more subtle gloss or shine to printed paper, as well as offering some protection from smearing, water and wear. Dull varnish is often used to reduce the glare and improve readability of a piece.

Aqueous Coating

Aqueous coating is a protective, water-based sealant that offers more protection than a varnish. It is fast-drying, environmentally friendly and the glossy version has a higher shine than standard varnishes.

UV Coating

UV coating is a liquid protectant applied to a printed piece and then cured with ultraviolet radiation. It can be formulated to a variety of high gloss finishes that enhance the clarity of print. These coatings can be applied with full or spot coverage, and even with special raised effects for more dimension. Liquid UV coatings are solvent free and emit no volatile organic compounds or VOCs.

Laminate

Laminates offer the most protection, providing a strong, water-resistant, non-scratching surface. Plastic film encapsulates the paper to protect it, and can be applied either as a clear sheet or as a liquid that is cured and dried.

 

Rely on your printer for advice and direction with any questions you have in fashioning your brand or designing your marketing materials. They should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for print, signage, apparel and integrated marketing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!

Shop our full ImageSmith catalog online here. We can work with you to find the best option to suit your needs. Please note, prices in online catalog do not include decoration, but call us for a quote at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.