At the time of going to press, the lenticular bunny had clearly served its purpose and was the second most popular campaign of all time, as voted on the Volvo website. While none of this may sound out of the ordinary, what is extraordinary is that the lenticular campaign was in fact a television advert that mimicked a printing technique.
With electronic media increasingly eating into print’s market share, this televisual homage is a timely reminder of print’s power to engage in a way that no other medium can. Whether it be the look or feel of a printed item, right through to its smell or even its taste, a printing technique exists to arouse the senses.
Impactful print
One only has to look around a typical local high street to see creative uses of printed materials. There’s Ikea’s lenticular poster sites that transform a chair covered in a bundle of clothes into a neat and tidy wardrobe filled with the same items. Or how about Cadbury’s Dairy Milk 3D billboard that sees chunks being eaten out of the bar as the campaign goes on. Alternatively, stop off at your local newsagent and pick up the April issue of technology magazine Wired, which uses a dual cover as part of a special report on transparency – the first cover was printed onto clear acetate and shows a woman in a business suit, but if you fold back the page, she’s in her birthday suit.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are endless examples of print being used to capture the look, the feel or the smell of something in a way that television, radio or electronic messaging simply can’t.
Some of these effects are cheap and easy to achieve. But that doesn’t stop them from being effective. Just ask James Turner, graphics and signage manager at luxury department store Harvey Nichols. His brief was to replace the expired royal warrant issued by the Queen Mother, which was proudly emblazoned on the store’s carrier bags, and ensure that the bags still had a regal quality about them. Turner’s solution to this conundrum was the use of foil blocking. “The Harvey Nichols logo is simple and timeless but it’s quite plain. Foil blocking gives it that extra element,” he explains.
Another convert to the power of print is the Metropolitan Police. It approached CBS Outdoor with an idea for a new recruitment campaign built around the Met’s trademark high-visibility jackets. “CBS got on the phone to us and we advised them that they could screenprint a day-glow yellow and a metallic silver to get as close as possible to the look of the fluorescent jackets,” explains Tony Flynne, sales executive at Augustus Martin. Matching inks from the print firm’s inhouse ink department, the eye-catching campaign managed to replicate the jackets perfectly, right down to the reflective strips that glowed from the AdShel posters.
According to Michael Turner, director of the Digital and Screen Printers Association, print’s power to engage people in this manner stems from its ability to create a lasting impression rather than a transient one. “Obviously other media can give you things that you can hear or see, but print can give you a visual experience that you can see and sometimes hold in your hand – that’s much more potent than TV.”
Turner cites the production of Sensations, a book of unique effects produced by screen printing that has been pulled together by the Federation of European Screen Printers’ Association (Fespa) and is aimed at printers, as well as print buyers and agencies.
Sexy techniques
Explaining the purpose of the book, which was unveiled at the Fespa show in Berlin, Fespa Events managing director Frazer Chesterman says: “We want printers and buyers to know that you can do sexy techniques with screen, and stretch the expectations of both parties.”
Patrick Auer, former printer and now owner of Colchester-based print management outfit Leanprint, believes that more ventures that promote print’s advantages need to be undertaken.
“Many customers are aware of these processes but they don’t necessarily know how to achieve the best results,” says Auer, who provides a glossary of print terminology for all of his customers so that they understand how the individual processes work. “Good technical advice is vital to ensure customer satisfaction and extra added-value,” he adds.
But is this what printers are providing? Not according to one print manager, who comments: “Publishers and designers are aware of the various finishes that are available but the everyday commercial printer that doesn’t offer these services themselves often won’t tell their customers about them, because there’s a sense that they may be losing profit by outsourcing this work.”
One company that does offer added-value finishes is Leeds-based Best Cover UV, which provides embellishments such as fragrance encapsulation, scratch-offs and metallics.
Best Cover managing director Darren Crake says that end-users are always asking for new and decorative print finishing extras. However, he concedes that to offer such services requires a large initial outlay and many printers may not be prepared, or even able, to go down this route. “Top of most printers’ wishlist would be a new press and not a dedicated offline coater,” he says.
But with such intense competition in the marketplace, the ability to offer value-added finishes is ever more in demand, which makes it important to invest in kit that can handle this type of work.
That’s certainly the belief of John Hopkinson, sales and marketing director at inline foiling developer OFT Technology. He says that a new breed of machines is making value-added embellishments, such as foiling, much easier to deliver than it used to be.
Unique offering
“We’ve sold our units to commercial printers who have never used foil before because it was cost-prohibitive, and we’re going to see a lot more advertisements using it in the future,” says Hopkinson.
Investment in print embellishing technology is a wise move for printers looking to grow their business because those that take the plunge should be able to find niches that no other media can touch. Take holograms for example. OFT’s new product Filmtone creates special effects (inline on a standard press) using varnish and hologrammatic foil, which will have big implications not only in value-added print, but also in security markets.
Another area in which print is untouchable (if you’ll pardon the pun) is in the field of haptics – the sense of touch. “The physical look and feel of print has a ‘wow factor’ that no other media can compete with,” says Best Cover’s Crake.
One person who agrees with this is Will Stone, UK and Ireland head of communications for paper merchant UPM-Kymmene. The firm worked closely with haptics experts as well as its own in-house research team to create a new paper selection tool for its customers, known as the “paper sommelier”.
“The idea is to help publishers select papers based not only on production values, but the harder-to-define emotional and physical values such as touch and feel,” explains Stone.
Areas covered by the paper sommelier include emotional characteristics such as ‘fun’, ‘conservative’ and ‘radical’, through to visual and physical characteristics such as feel of paper, bulk of paper and the colour of substrate.
“Our study confirms that age, gender, nationality and occupation affect consumer preferences as well as the synergy effect between sense-based properties,” adds UPM senior researcher Matti Ristolainen. “Therefore these new tools will help publishers to select the right paper that best suits their target audience.”
So what of the future? Even the most biased member of the industry could not refute the fact that print’s market share is being eaten away by new electronic media. The creative agencies themselves confirm that they have been asked to place a certain amount of their annual spend in these developing areas but say that clients are still investing in print and that creative finishing solutions are being dreamed up all the time.
And while other media may eventually dethrone print from its front-running spot, there are still some areas in which it cannot be surpassed.
“What print can do better than anything else is to produce a one-off image of whatever size at a phenomenally low cost,” says Multigraphics managing director Gary Lasham. “There is no other medium that allows you to create high-visibility, high-impact, economical advertising in hours.”
Lasham believes that, pound for pound, print still provides the most cost-effective form of communication (for the time being at least), and until newer technologies become more established, and all-importantly cost-effective, it looks set to continue to be the number one form of media thanks to its unique sensory stimulation attributes.
PRINT EMBELLISHMENTS
Glossary
Thermography A special powder is added to the ink. The printed piece is heated and the powder and ink mixture dries to form a raised effect
Die-stamping An intaglio process of printing in which the resultant impression stands out in relief above the surface of the stamped material. Can be either coloured (using inks or foil) or blind
Die-cutting Sharp steel blades known as ‘rules’ are used to cut a shape into paper or board
Foiling Older platens or cylinders heat glue and attach foil to it with pressure. New inline technology now uses a normal offset process to print a cold glue pattern and press foil onto it, peeling away the excess
Embossing The process of impressing an image in relief into the paper to produce a raised effect on the paper surface without the use of inks
Debossing In debossing an image, such as a logo, a title, or other design, is heat-pressed into the
surface of the paper with a die, creating depressions rather than raised impressions
Blind embossing The process of stamping an image into the paper to produce a depressed effect on the paper surface without the use of inks
Fragrance encapsulation Scent is enclosed in tiny capsules, which are broken open by friction. The scent can then be printed screen or offset
Spot varnishes A spot varnish is applied to chosen spots or areas of a printed piece to highlight that part of the design
Textured coatings Coatings, such as glossy, silk or matt finish, can be applied to the top layer of paper to improve the printing surface by making it smoother or add a translucent finish
Thermochromic inks Inks that change colour in response to changes in temperature, as used in forehead thermometers or indicators for cooked food packaging
Holograms Either a discrete image, created specially for an organisation and held if necessary on a world register for security purposes, or a hologrammatic foil with a repeated pattern
