Print
Solutions July 2005
Case
Study
Enchanting
Booklet Brings Awards, More Business
Once
upon a time, a printer teamed
up with a design firm and an illustrator
to create a marketing brochure
that rivaled the most enchanting
of fairy tales. The book was filled
with clever limericks and colorful
characters. The designs were delightful.
And the production techniques
were so realistic, you wanted
to touch and savor every page.
The brochure swept up awards in
printing and design competitions
across the land. More importantly,
it won scores of new clients for
the trio of contributors.
The
story begins in 2003, when Steve
Harney, president of Quality Printing,
Anderson, Ind., was toying with
ideas for a new promotional piece.
Tired of the standard capabilities’
brochure, he turned to Planet
10, a design firm and frequent
customer based in nearby Indianapolis,
to gauge its interest in collaborating
on a more innovative project.
Planet 10 principals Mike and
Jennifer Tuttle were intrigued,
but not quite sure about the direction
the project should take. They
decided they wanted to work with
a local illustrator or photographer
to root the promotion in their
corner of the Midwest. After brainstorming,
the Tuttles remembered seeing
the work of Greenfield, Ind.,
illustrator Chris Sickels in a
design publication and invited
him to come on board with his
whimsical, trademark “red-nose”
characters in tow.
Sickels
was wary, however, because he
hadn’t worked with Planet
10 or Quality Printing. “He
had had some bad experiences where
printers or graphic designers
wanted to use his services, and
in turn he was going to get a
brochure or something,”
Harvey says. “It had never
panned out for him.” But
Sickels had been thinking about
ideas for a children’s book,
writing limericks on frequent
flights between Greenfield and
Los Angeles. He saw potential
in bringing those limericks to
life through the proposed collaboration
and signed onto the project. “It
didn’t take a lot of convincing
once he found out more about us
and we showed him what we were
going to do,” Harney says.
The
final product is an 11 x 14-inch
booklet, saddle-stitched with
a real red thread (a printed red
thread winds its way through the
entire piece). The booklet highlights
the talents of all three contributors,
while doubling as children’s
book titled Hey Fred! Nice Red
Thread. The cover features an
oval die cut that showcases an
illustration of “Fred,”
one of Sickels’ signature
puppets that he first draws, sculpts,
then photographs along with tiny
props. Eight interior spreads
feature a different character
with a supporting limerick and
a production technique tailored
to that scene. For instance, the
spread featuring “Shane”
reads, “Shane wanders around
in heavy rains wondering about
the weightlessness of walnuts
in outer space,” with Shane
looking skyward with outstretched
arms. Sickels created the rain
with a milk jug full of water
suspended over the puppet as he
shot the scene. Harney brought
that rain to life with a satin
aqueous coating and spot UV gloss.
Other
spreads feature embossing, debossing,
die cuts—even a pop-up for
“Ivan,” who “flew
away in a bucket rigged with fans
and rubber bands.” Every
page has potential for unlimited
special effects, and the Tuttles
originally specified something
special for each scene. In the
end, the team decided to use restraint
and focus their time and money
on effects that truly enhanced
the stories. “The deciding
factor was, is it going to add
to the artwork, or is it just
something we’re putting
on the page to show another thing
you could do?” Harney says.
“We started pulling in the
reins if it didn’t seem
like it was going to be a big
contribution to Chris’ artwork.”
The
project took nearly a year to
execute. “We had a lot of
good things going for us, though:
It was well thought-out, we had
a lot of time, and the people
involved just cared a lot about
what the end piece was going to
be—they worked very hard
at getting it right,” Harney
says. The initial print run was
2,500 pieces, 2,300 of which they’ve
already distributed, and they
plan to print more this year.
Quality Printing invested about
$50,000 in the project, which
covered the cost of materials
(mostly dies), printing and design.
That figure excludes Sickels’
expenses; the firms traded services
to cover those costs.
That
may seem like a hefty sum to invest
into a single marketing project,
but it has paid off. In addition
to the accolades the book has
received from notable design publications
and prestigious competitions (most
recently Sappi Fine Paper’s
North American Printer of the
Year Gold Award), it’s also
brought in several new accounts
for Quality Printing. The most
lucrative is a grand-opening invitation
for Caesar’s Forum in Las
Vegas—a $40,000 project.
The
story of Fred and his red thread
doesn’t end there. Quality
Printing, Planet 10 and Sickels
recently reunited to create a
calendar that’s a mix-and-match
flip-book full of Sickles’
characters and limericks. They
distributed the calendar to 4,000
attendees at Quality Printing’s
trade show booth during the HOW
Design Conference last month,
where the Red Thread team also
received an award for winning
Best of Show in HOW magazine’s
2004 Self-Promotion Design Awards.
“As
much recognition as we’ve
gotten from this, I think it would
be crazy for us not to talk about
a Red Thread 2, or some type of
follow-up in the next couple of
years,” Harney says. With
that kind of momentum, it’s
a safe bet that Fred will live
happily ever after.
—Sarah
Whitman
Quality
Printing is a family-owned business
that has operated for 35 years.
The Anderson, Ind.-based company
employs 45 people and expects
$7.5 million in 2005 sales, says
President Steve Harney, whose
mother started the business. Harney
offers these tips to printers
who want to produce a collaborative
marketing promotion:
1.
Start with a budget.
Determine how much you’re
willing to spend before you seek
people you’re interested
in teaming up with.
2.
Give yourself ample time to think
about what you want. You don’t
want to rush into something that
involves others’ time, resources
and reputation—or your own.
3.
Be patient. Harney and collaborators
spent nine months working out
the kinks on a project and made
numerous enhancements. Nine months
seems like a long time, but two
or three rounds of proofing wouldn’t
have been enough, he says.
4.
Listen to others’ views
and opinions. Harney and collaborators
had several disagreements along
the way, but hashing out the details
was half the fun. The people you
bring in are there for a reason—they
have talent. Use it!
