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YMCA Gameboard

Mon, 16 May 2011 09:31:06 -0400

The 2009 Annual Report for the YMCA of Rochester was bundled with an interesting piece intended to honor the year’s Volunteers of the Year. The standard, saddle-stitched annual report was inserted into a die-cut gameboard.

Each location’s square pulls up to reveal the Volunteers of the Year from that branch.

This piece was constructed from two press sheets (printed 4c/4c with a gloss varnish), and the top sheet was die cut while the bottom sheet was not. After gluing together, the sheets were trimmed to create a flush edge. We intentionally split the rear cover and front cover by 1/8” to make for an easier score + fold.

This is a simple little piece that’s been in our portfolio for quite some time; and it’s always been a crowd pleaser.

Wildflower Mailer

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 08:38:27 -0400

If you’re a customer, friend, or prospect of EPi, odds are that you recently received our spring mailer.

We thought it would be fun to mail everyone on our contact list a packet of wildflower seeds.

It’s easier than it seems to mail an actual item in a direct mail campaign.

We created a small seed packet out of a flat press sheet and converted down to a 2 3/4” x 4” size.

We went to a local nursery and purchased several pounds of wildflower seed mix. Once the packets returned from converting, we inserted the seeds by hand and sealed the packet shut.

A single drop of (strong!) adhesive was applied to the carrier, and the mailer was ready to go! In mailing an item like this, note that it needs to tab shut. The post office will designate how many tabs it requires based on the thickness of its contents.

Never be too shy when it comes to direct mail! The post office will mail absolutely anything… for the right price.

Reeds Holiday Mailer

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 09:00:07 -0400

Okay, we’re about 4 months too late to be posting about the exciting new pieces you should be mailing out during the holidays. We like to think we’re 8 months too early. The holidays produce some of the best (shiniest) print campaigns, so we pulled one from the 2010 archives to share with you.

Reeds Jewelers/Jenss Decor relies on direct mail to stay in front of their customers at crucial points throughout the year. Just before Thanksgiving, this piece arrived in mailboxes throughout the Northeast as a holiday promotion.

A Pearl Reich Shine A7 envelope was used to house this bi-fold card. Though the finished size is a standard 5” x 7”, The flat size is 8.5 x 7 - a short fold that enabled this clever 1.5” show-through to be elegantly framed by the A7’s square design.

Note the unique texture of the paper. The designer at Reeds was looking for the prestige of a linen paper, but the “pop” that a glossy sheet offers. Working with our paper suppliers at Xpedx we landed on Neenah’s Classic Linen 84# White Pearl Cover, a coated linen paper. Perfect!

Lastly, an incentive to visit the recipient’s local Reeds/Reeds Jenss store; a tipped on coupon card. This was the same stock as the envelope (Reich Pearl Shine), but in a cover weight and laminated in 1.7 mil matte laminate.

All in all, a great piece. It’s fun to use new papers and great to experiment with neat folds - but it’s best when good print ultimately means good marketing.

Buffalo Dining Cards

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 08:30:00 -0400

In late 2010, Block Club Creative and EPi worked together to print and fulfill an intriguing new retail piece unlike anything we’ve ever printed. The piece made waves in the Buffalo/WNY area; Buffalo Dining Cards.

Here’s the description of the piece as described on the Buffalo Dining Card website:

“Each Buffalo Dining Card is a gift certificate––46 cards are worth $10 off a purchase of $25 or more (not including tax, tip or alcohol), and 6 wildcards are good for freebies and additional savings… there are no blackout dates and cards are valid now until Dec. 31, 2011.

$1 from the sale of each deck is donated to the Women & Children’s Hospital of Buffalo Foundation.”

Several thousand decks had to be prepared for retail sale on both the internet and brick-and-mortar stores, so we also needed to create a custom POP display.

After several weeks of creating dummies, trying different papers, and finalizing die lines, we went to press.

Straight-tuck boxes printed 6-up on 12pt C1S stock

Patrick & Courtney from Block Club on a press check

Printing the project only took a day or two. Finishing the project took weeks.

Finishing began with alphabetical collating, round cornering, and hand-stuffing…

…and finished with each deck shrink-wrapped and set 30-up into a custom POP cradle (which was also shrink-wrapped to keep the decks in order during delivery).

Once the POP displays delivered to their retail locations, a simple peel-off adhesive backer was applied to the rear of the POP display, and Buffalo Dining Cards were officially for sale!

By the end of the holiday season, feedback and sales figures made their way back to Block Club. The project turned out to be a great success.

At first glance, custom die-cut boxes, fulfillment, and POP displays seem a bit too cumbersome for a 29” press and a handful of employees. However, Buffalo Dining Cards exist as proof that a flexible customer and a versatile production team can yield exceptional results.

EPi Brochure

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 14:00:06 -0500

As a printing company, we believe that our best foot forward when reaching out to new customers is with powerful, impactful self-promotional pieces. What better way to show the type of printing we’re capable of than with our own marketing materials? So, apologies for the self-indulgent post today; we’re going to be talking about ourselves a bit.

This is EPi’s company brochure. At a finished size of 12” x 7.5”, the sizing is somewhat unusual but still appears natural. The front and rear cover of the brochure are printed with Fibermark’s 24pt Touche Cover, a card stock that feels more like a velvet blanket than paper. 24pt stock can be a cumbersome thickness for most conventional presses, so we opted to print our logo in Spot UV - a small location printed only with ultraviolet coating.

We also utilize spiral binding for this piece. Its first incarnation simply used a red plastic binding, but we opted to reprint this piece in the fall and decided to expand our color scheme a bit.

Content-wise, the piece is comprehensive. It is filled with testimonials, company history, a capabilities listing, and much more. It follows a format of testimonial -> translucent printed sheet -> content - like so:

Anyone that works with us knows that we love a good translucent sheet, and can’t resist the opportunity to experiment with a little imageplay.

Translucent sheets can print very cleanly, and work well when overlaying text with the right layout.

Finally, we finish the piece with our contact information on the back cover. Bearing the thickness of the Touche cover stock in mind, we opted to screen print with two hits of an opaque white ink.

We hope to convey a certain message to our prospects by introducing ourselves with this piece. By using a wide array of printing and finishing techniques, coupled with high-quality offset printing on various papers, we want to show that we can be a dynamic, comprehensive resource for all things printed. We want to show that we’re different. We want to show that we can handle standard printing in our sleep, and creative projects with ease. We want to encourage our customers to team up with us, and to try something new.

We want to share this brochure with you - if there’s one piece in our catalog that we’re excited to send your way, it’s this. Don’t hesitate to ask.

Your envelopes are bleeding

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 10:00:07 -0500

Designers, today’s post is for you. EPi has taken special consideration in recent years to bolster our envelope printing capabilities. Any company can print one or two color preconverted envelopes. Using our Direct Image press, EPi can print 4 color envelopes, either in special PMS colors or in full process. We spoke about that capability a few months ago in this post.

Amazingly, the mad scientists in our press room have now figured out how to set up bleeds on those same preconverted envelopes.

The technique isn’t too far off from standard envelope printing. Shift a roller here, move a gripper there, and it’s not hard to add some pretty cool effects to an otherwise bland envelope.

Because the process isn’t far off from standard envelope printing, the cost is consistent with more standard pieces. Imagine revamping your company’s (or client’s) envelopes from a 1 or 2 color piece with the logo and address tucked into the left corner, to a 4 color process piece with bleeds… for the same price. Keep in mind that you’ll need to communicate with us so that the envelope’s seams don’t become an issue.

Of course, we’re always happy to convert envelopes (print flat press sheets, die cut and score, then glue and apply moistenable adhesive) for our customers. We do it all the time.

(Not printed by EPi - simply an example from Flickr)

However, the preconverted options that we can offer can be a far more economical option… sometimes by as much as 50% of the price of custom conversion.

Magnets & More!

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 12:14:17 -0500

In 2010, EPi and Harris, an international communications and information technology company serving government and commercial markets worldwide, collaborated on a very special print campaign. An innovative new military communications system had just been released and Harris needed a unique presentation of its capabilities.

Tracey Kohl worked with Harris to plan the logistics of this absolutely fantastic piece.

Finishing at a compact size of 5 x 3.75 x .25, the brochure packs a lot of punch into a piece that can easily fit in your pocket.

The first component to give the savvy recipient pause is the cover; it stays tightly closed with the help of oppositely polarized magnets inserted into two of the piece’s three panels.

The magnets give the piece a very sturdy feel and satisfying “click” as it closes.

Opened wide, three panels serve three very different purposes.

1) The left panel has a thin slit for, no, not a business card, but a mini-DVD.

2) The middle panel carries a removable 40p+cover saddle-stitched booklet. The rear cover of the booklet tucks into a stationary pocket, but slides out for easy handling and reading.

3) As you can begin to see in the above photograph, the right panel is a tip-on 6-panel map that folds up, down, and out.

Lastly, we finished all of the cover stock with a glossy laminate to protect the final product and give it a healthy shine.

The objectives for this piece are fulfilled. It is comprehensive, elaborate, and content-rich. It is also clean, compact, and interesting.

Not only does a printed campaign like this add immeasurable value to a transaction, it is kept on hand for years as a referral tool. EPi worked directly with Harris’ internal marketing department to plan and execute this job, and we were extremely proud to receive an ADDY award together in the 2010 Rochester ADDYs.

World-class Printing

Tue, 04 Jan 2011 11:00:06 -0500

By showing off this week’s sample to our contacts, we’ve discovered that a passport is an oft-attempted print campaign with varying results. It’s difficult to track down the right papers to properly simulate an actual passport, but this piece comes pretty close. The University of Rochester Office of Admissions used the passport idea to encourage incoming students to embrace their diverse student population, and came to EPi to hit the nail on the head.

Each page highlights a different location represented by students at the U of R, with a spot for a regional student’s signature.

A filled book carries hefty bounties, ranging from a night on the town in Rochester to an iPad to a trip around the world!

At a finished size of 3.5 x 5, this printed piece is the perfect size to simulate a passport. We used a leatherette (read: embossed paper) cover that was bonded to an uncoated sheet. While the cover had to be foil stamped with a design, the inner cover could be printed in 4c process.

The text pages were printed on a dense but translucent paper. In the above image, you can make out the deep red EPi logo behind the page. Actual passports seem to be printed on synthetic stock that has a similar translucent effect, so this paper is spot-on.

After round-cornering and saddle-stitching, the finished passport is ready to go. This year’s incoming class at U of R will have a great long-term project that pushes them to branch out, make friends, and appreciate their school.

Off Register

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 09:29:35 -0500

Finally, a show about the always-smooth relationship between designers and printers!

“The press room is the heart and soul of the printing profession. It’s where designers respect how difficult the art of printing can be. Salesmen promise only what they can deliver, and pressmen cheerfully bend over backwards to make the impossible possible.”

Special thanks to Sappi for this fantastic series - great idea!

The holiday decorations are up at EPi! …but Mandy is too...

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 15:07:17 -0500

The holiday decorations are up at EPi!

…but Mandy is too shy to say hello.

One week to go!

Harris Beach Holiday Card

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 01:02:07 -0500

Ah, the fine art of the holiday card. A time-honored tradition of thanking friends and contacts for the year’s successes. We’ve all stood in offices around this time of year, and we’ve seen rows and rows of generic holiday cards taped up on walls and on desk ledges.

What a golden opportunity to try something different.

Harris Beach contacted EPi for this year’s finishing-intensive holiday card - one of the most outstanding pieces hitting mailboxes this season.

At 15” x 7” flat, this gate-fold holiday card closes to 5” x 7” and inserts into a standard A7 Envelope. Special consideration was taken to ensure that the die cut portion of the snowflake would lay cleanly over the embossing.

You may notice that this piece utilizes two finishing processes that we’ve already discussed; embossing and die cutting. An additional feature which is actually quite striking is the paper, Neenah’s Starwhite Flash Blue 84# Cover. Starwhite Flash is a metallic paper, but Flash Blue reflects light to present a blue luminescence to the viewer.

So the next time you’re sitting in a waiting room admiring the holiday correspondence hanging on the wall, take special note of particularly intricate work. It’s difficult to plan, but it’s the first thing that will catch your attention. Sure to impress.

Ample Samples of Bolder Folders

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 10:00:07 -0500

In printing, we often talk about first impressions. The moment of pause when a contact first holds a printed piece in their hands, exploring how it feels, looks, and what it contains. Regardless of your relationship with that person, it can set the mood for all future interactions pertaining to that material. After the envelope, a pocket folder usually mans your company’s front line when it comes to first impressions.

Neenah Paper presents a quarterly competition to printers around the country based around a particular theme. As long as a printer is using their paper to fulfill the job, they can win prizes and recognition (and a free reprint!) for submitting award-winning work based on a theme. Early this year, the competition (called Ample Sample), was themed around Pocket Folders. Here are this year’s winners:

Neenah does a fantastic job of promoting printers that use their paper and maintaining relationships with designers that spec it. This summer, we won a package full of goodies, including a paper clock, for answering trivia questions submitted on Twitter!

Last month we printed a new folder for Buffalo-based Collegiate Village, a student apartment campus.

Designer Jackie Loson did a fantastic job with the layout of the folder, integrating some of Buffalo’s favorite offerings into a simplified skyline. They also took advantage of a unique die line, which precisely incorporates half-moon slits in three locations. While the folder finishes at 9” x 12”, the slits are accurately positioned to hold a single 8.5 x 11 sheet.

This lets them include a personalized letter to the recipient. If a potential tenant calls and requests literature, the representative that takes the call is in a position to cleanly present a brief note, or sell sheet, to the caller. Little things can make a big difference, and you only get one chance to make a first impression.

See-through mail

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 04:00:00 -0500

A few months ago we discussed a calendar we printed using translucent paper. Translucent paper isn’t anything new - but did you know that the post office has no problem handling translucent envelopes?

The only catch to using translucent envelopes is that the actual content of the enclosed piece needs to be heeded so the post office’s equipment can read and process the address. On the printing end of things, translucent papers can take days to dry, so don’t make a rush order out of it! We always encourage an open dialogue with us to avoid snafus in your project, particularly when using specialty papers.

So pardon the brief post this afternoon, but this is a readily available, oft-overlooked item (even by us!) that can add some real punch to stationary or direct mail. On a #10 envelope, consider an opaque image on the back of your letterhead that, when folded down to 3.66 x 8.5, can play off of the design printed on the envelope.

Or keep it simple and make sure your logo is the first thing your contacts see when their mail arrives.

Die!

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 11:25:00 -0400

Die cutting is the cheapest and easiest way to make an out-of-the-ordinary piece of collateral. Period. Many seasoned print buyers understand that die cutting usually only adds a couple hundred dollars to a print campaign, and exercise this mechanism frequently. However, the finished product can often seem intimidating to those that don’t know better. “That seems expensive…” is a typical response to reviewing some of our best die cut pieces.

For the sake of reference, a few posts ago we highlighted a die-cut piece we printed for the University at Buffalo. That project, of course, began as a flat press sheet:

…and finished as a die-cut of the North Campus skyline.

So how does it work?

Once the design of a die cut is decided upon, a designer will create what’s called a “die line” layer in InDesign. This is a thin red line that wraps around the printed image and illustrates where the piece needs to be cut. That layer is then submitted to a metal fabricator who uses an accurate computer program to create a custom die in the exact shape of the die line. It is worth keeping in mind that custom die creation is typically billed by the inch.

The die arrives at EPi from the fabricator.

The above is a basic die used to create Rolodex cards. Note the foam cushion surrounding the metal component. This is typically a bit higher than the metal in order to reduce pressure on the paper and to protect it from crushing the sheet.

The die is then affixed to a die cutter and registered for accuracy. Printed paper is fed into the die cutter sheet-by-sheet, and the die is pushed directly against the paper with enough pressure to completely penetrate it. In addition to “framing” a finished piece, a die can also score and perforate.

Each cut piece is then gently poked out of the original sheet by hand. This die cutter that we keep in-house began its life as a single-color woodblock printing press, and has since been converted to be used strictly for die cutting. It’s one of the most interesting pieces of equipment on our floor.

It’s a wonder that more marketing pieces don’t take advantage of this basic machine. If something needs to stand out, why not make it curve, bend, tuck, and fold? Anything is better than that sell sheet.

CMYK Envelopes

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 17:10:37 -0400

Our four-color RYOBI Direct Image press is one of the major workhorses in the production room of EPi. As a strictly offset shop, the Direct Image (DI) press helps us handle short runs of projects, and keeps us competitive with digital print.

We’ll explore the nuances of that press another time. This is a post about a unique capability that press offers; four color process envelopes.

The DI has an envelope feeder and can handle full color envelopes, all the way up to a 10” x 13” envelope. However, we typically print on #10 business envelopes. Being an offset press, it can also handle unique papers.

Have a look at this gala invitation we recently printed on 80# Reich Shine envelopes, and 80# Neenah Starwhite Flash Cover for the invitation:

We used an A7 Gold envelope, which was inkjetted and sent to the recipients. An A6-size silver envelope was enclosed as the remittance envelope. This photo doesn’t properly demonstrate the detail of the paper, but each envelope has a light opalescence that conveys the elegance of the event.

This is a great tool to keep in mind for events, holiday cards, gift cards, or a neat way to attract attention to a direct mail campaign. Envelopes don’t exactly make designers jump out of their chairs, but this is another out-of-the-ordinary offering EPi brings to the table that helps them flex their creative muscle and bring genius into something that would otherwise feel ho-hum.

A hypnotizing new video on how ink is made, courtesy of...

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 08:34:39 -0400

A hypnotizing new video on how ink is made, courtesy of Canada’s Printing Ink Company. Thanks to Walter Ketcham for posting this on his site’s blog.

Embossing

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 04:05:00 -0400

EPi has printed a series of recent projects that necessitated embossing. Embossing is a classic finishing mechanism that has been utilized for hundreds of years, even prior to the era of modern printing. It’s uncomplicated, sophisticated, and effective.

When paper is embossed, a press sheet is placed between two custom male & female dies which push into the sheet and leave a relief of the custom image engraved on that die.

Embossing is a great tool to play with. It can be integrated into a printed image to incorporate tactility, or it can stand alone and emboss or deboss on the blank area of a sheet for a technique called “blind embossing/debossing”.

Blind Debossing

One of the best pieces from our body of work is this pocket folder. Of course, it utilizes a fantastic uncoated sheet and an interesting vertical pocket, but its most striking element is its emboss.

The buzzwords and headlines on this piece all jump off of the page, which entices the reader to run their hand across the folder, pay attention to the content, and, above all else, keeps this folder out of the recycling bin.

One aspect of embossing that must always be kept in mind is its deboss; essentially where the mirror of the emboss appears recessed into the other side of the page. If considered while designing, it can be used to great effect.

The designer of this piece took the deboss into account and outsmarted it. The front panel of this piece is a double-thick sheet (see: Minutia), is folded over itself, and glued down after the embossing. The inside cover has been embossed with the front cover to take full advantage of this effect.

If you can excuse Microsoft Paint, here’s how it was done:

The only indication left on the finished piece is a very small, almost unnoticeable lip on the upper portion of the inside cover.

Embossing has been used in print finishing for so long that it’s almost overlooked in the age of variable data, die cutting, and 3D pop-ups. Creative applications of embossing can be some of the most elegant and well-crafted pieces around, and are sure to make your targets take a second (and third, and fourth) look at your work.

QR: Why Not?

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 10:25:27 -0400

So what are these things?

They’re popping up everywhere. Business cards, magazines, billboards, and even POP displays.

It’s called a QR (Quick Response) code, and many marketers view it as the long-awaited bridge between print and digital media. Evidence can be found in almost any Marketing Communications magazine published within the last year or so.

To put it in a nutshell, QR codes are essentially encrypted data read by a dedicated application on any cell phone with a camera. Once the data is interpreted by a phone’s software, it can direct the phone to do any number of commands: visit a webpage, call a phone number, send a text message, log into a WiFi network, and much more.

Since the technology essentially pushes any smartphone to the internet, the possibilities for integrating this into a marketing campaign are endless.

Restaurants place a QR code on their front window; when it’s scanned, a YouTube video of the chef giving a tour of his restaurant is immediately accessed.

A QR code is placed on the back of a business card; when it’s scanned, it calls the number on the card or visits its website.

1,000 consumers enter a raffle or giveaway, and they receive an entry ticket that includes a QR. Scan the QR code on the card; 999 redirect to a “Sorry!” page, 1 redirects to a winner’s page.

Those are just rudimentary examples strictly to illustrate how QR works. Any degree of creativity can catapult this basic tool into a marketing home run.

Here’s a video of a QR code in action redirecting to EPi’s YouTube page.

Perhaps the most mouth-watering component of QR codes to marketers is that they can be used for gathering data; with a few simple tweaks, it’s easy to know how effective a direct mail campaign has been, who is interested in it, or how often they use the QR code to reach out to your company.

So how can our business start using QR in our printed materials?

Visit a QR Generating website and generate a code. We recommend Kaywa.

Then what?
Save the code and simply drop it on your next marketing piece before you send it to print.

What is a good QR Reader to install on my smartphone?

On Android-based Smartphones, use Barcode Scanner.

On the iPhone, try NeoReader or QR App

Blackberry users should use UpCode or BeeTagg.

Like everything else on the internet, QR Codes only become more useful and relevant as more companies embrace them and as consumers recognize them. The most savvy marketers use QR all the time, so the mere usage of QR speaks volumes about your organization. Best of all, it’s free - so what do you have to lose?

A new present from Unisource

Fri, 17 Sep 2010 15:57:33 -0400

Pam from Unisource left us with a brand new cabinet today! So many fresh, interesting new papers (and updates to some of our old favorites).

This is like printer catnip! We’ve been exploring it all afternoon.

Thanks, Pam!

Let's Go Buffalo!

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 16:33:00 -0400

A brief post on this Friday afternoon before we venture into the weekend. We thought we’d share this interesting die cut piece we printed for UB - a trifold brochure that opens into a panorama of the University at Buffalo’s North Campus.

Perhaps it’s time to elaborate on how die cutting works? We’ll snap some photos/video next week to show off one of our favorite finishing techniques.

Enjoy the weekend!

Edit, 9/30

New camera, better picture.