Hi.  This is Frank Romano for WhatTheyThink.com.  How do you make print more interesting? 

I was at a recent trade show and I just picked up a few pieces that I think made print more interesting.  Here is one where they die-cut it into the shape of the SmartCar, laminated it, and you can then hang it up by something if you so desire.  I don’t know why you would do that, but you certainly can.  By the way, this is the actual size of a SmartCar.  Most people don’t know that.  This was one—this was a very interesting piece.  It’s die-cut.  There’s a dollar sign ($) and it has letters punched ahead of it.  It’s plasticized.  You can send this through the mail, by the way.  They will take dimensional mail.  They’ll charge you a premium for it, though, they will certainly do that.

Is your message clear?  Direct mail with direct impact.  The name of the company is ShipShapes.  I love it.  Here is one where they did a wonderful job with embossing.  Now the way they did it so you don’t see the emboss, is the part that has the emboss on it is glued here so you really can’t see that it went through the paper.  But you can now do this kind of thing with inkjet.  The Scodix machine is a good example, as well as Dimensional Clear from Kodak, and some of the coating capabilities from other companies.  They have the ability to deposit layers of inkjet or toner in order to give you an embossed look, a textured look.  But this is one that was done in a very traditional way, but high impact, absolutely no doubt.  Of course, if you’ve got the budget for it, there’s also—and I don’t know if you see this too well—but you’ve got lenticular printing.

This is one that shows you a fairground in a city.  This one has empty seats on it and then if you tilt it you see people in it.  I’m not sure that shows up very well.  This is one that shows dolphins cavorting, as in my pool—I don’t have a pool, but sounds good.  So what’s this all about?  You can make print more interesting.  There are things that we can do to get people’s attention, and this goes beyond variable data printing.  This comes up with just the way we can handle that piece of paper with standard finishing techniques, which many of us have available to us or can get done by a local finisher in some way, shape, or form.  So you want to make print more interesting?  Die-cut it, emboss it, trim it, cut it, laminate it in a variety of ways.

And that’s my opinion.