Every year, Suttle-Straus holds an employee awards ceremony with dinner and entertainment. At the event, employees are recognized for their years of service, certificates of craftsmanship are presented, and circle of excellence and key employees are announced. In addition to the awards ceremony, itself, we feature different entertainment each year. Once we heard our entertainment this year would be a mentalist/mind reader, our Creative team started discussing concepts.
We started thinking about old school magicians, mind readers and vintage palm reading posters. Once we established our graphic theme, we wanted to take the invitation to the next level by incorporating some sort of interactive component, creating a sense of “illusion” that would mimic the entertainment. Of course, we work inside our very own printing haven, so possibilities are endless…within reason. Throwing out ideas such as illusion-type paper, 3D material, scratch off ink, heat/UV sensitive paper, and disappearing ink, we ended our brainstorming session excited about the potential of working with a specialty ink that would reveal content for the event. We weren’t sure if some of these ideas were even possible or if we could run them on our printing presses, so we had some research to do.
Before gaining buy-in from our planning committee, we needed answers about how we would accomplish this concept. Meeting with our pressroom manager, Jason Sieling, we found out our press equipment could run specialty ink, but because we had not used it before, we’d need to do a little more research and testing. Jason was able to find out which specific inks were recommended for our presses and set up a conference call with the ink company.
Some highlights from the meeting:
After a few more conversations with the ink company and reviewing the samples, there were still a lot of unknowns. However, we knew this would be a learning opportunity for all of us. From setting up the file to how it would react on press, no one really knew what to expect. For a designer, this was, for lack of a better term, “shooting in the dark.”
We thought, what if we could manipulate the coating so it would reveal some lesser important content underneath? We set files up featuring the ink in multiple variations, as this was an experiment. We printed the ink alone, as well as with a background color, to see how it would react.
The decision to use this ink also impacted the design. Since it was something new to our employees, a caption was added to the design to inform them of the fun, interactive component. We also printed the ink on the outer edge of the pieces so it would automatically activate when held in their hands.
With the higher ink price, we looked for other ways to keep the overall cost down before presenting the concept to our planning committee. Considerations included paper type, quantity, size, etc. We found if we laid out the press sheet to include all of the components for the campaign, as seen above, rather than printing each piece separately, we could save quite a bit. This would increase efficiency on press and save time in bindery. However, this also meant we would need to have all of the components designed well in advance, including pieces that we didn’t traditional produce until closer to the event.
This specific campaign had several components, including an invitation, RSVP card, promotional poster, payroll stuffers, and event materials such as dinner meal cards and drink tickets. With all of the components on a single press sheet, we chose a house stock, 100# Sterling Cover, that worked well with every component. The press sheet layout allowed us to have four RSVP cards up, which was a great opportunity to print different art for each one. We then randomly split the employees into four groups to ensure they would receive different designs. The same happened with our payroll stuffers – printing them three up, we could feature different art on each one, so every two weeks there would be a new insert promoting the event.
We were able to get buy-in from the planning committee for the entire design concept. By having all necessary information up front, our estimate actually came in lower than last year's print material cost. The best part is that every component featured the specialty ink somewhere on it.
Once we got on press, our team had fun seeing the effectiveness of the coating, and with our cold Wisconsin mornings, we were able take the press sheet, hot off the press, outside to cool it down and see the color change instantly.
In the end, we found that the thermochromic ink is completely transparent. Even though we tried to manipulate it, the colors underneath still showed through. Also, because of this transparency, there was no need to knock out darker colors behind the specialty ink.
This campaign generated surprise from a lot of our employees, as most didn’t know we had this capability. After all, our Creative team had just learned about it recently. It was an amazing learning opportunity for both our Creative team, as well as our Press team.
Want to see these samples in person? Let us know by emailing marketing@suttle-straus.com. Please include your mailing address so we know where to send them.
Interested in working with our talented Creative team on your next project? Contact us via the link provided below.
Editor’s note: Using thermochromic ink also qualifies for a current USPS promotion, so there was the added possibility to save a little on postage. For additional ideas of ways to improve your mailer and learn if it qualifies for a USPS promotion, click here.