Hotcards, Full Color Printing In The Nation

Consumers want to be sure that it's all about the green, not the green.

A recent series of studies indicate that consumers may be feeling overwhelmed by the sudden wave of green printing, advertising, and product placement that has flooded the market over the last couple of years.

The transition has been dramatic. Much of the push behind eco-conscious living is about making change NOW, instead of waiting for things to get really bad. The problem, according to the studies conducted by the Shelton Group and Porter Novelli, is that so many new products and options are being pushed. Consumers feel that they don’t have the time or the budget to do them all, so why bother?

Have a great long weekend! And keep it red, white, blue, and GREEN all year round!

Proving, once again, that direct mail printing can be surprisingly controversial.

In Georgia, five Democrats are racing for the chance at a seat in the U.S. Senate. The primary election is on July 15th, and as such, candidate Vernon Jones sent out a statewide direct mail flyer this week as part of his print campaign.

The flyer itself is fairly standard: 6 x 11, two-sided, full color printing. The content, however, has got his fellow candidates, as well as presidential candidate Barack Obama’s campaign, up in arms.

On the front of the brochure, a cheering crowd is depicted with Obama and Jones in the foreground, both with mics in hand. The now-famous slogan, “Yes We Can!” is printed at the top of the image.

Hotcards welcomes you!

One of the biggest topics in the printing world is one we barely touch on in the Hotcards blog. That is, magazine print and design. I can’t really explain this lack except to say that it’s such a massive world unto itself that it seems daunting to cover it as well as everything else about full color printing.

That being said, we do print magazines and booklets here at Hotcards. We get to work with a lot of small, cool publications that print in limited runs, and it would be interesting to talk about that process now and again.

I was inspired to get into this topic by a post on print design over at the excellent design blog, Abduzeedo. The post got me looking through some awesome collections of book cover, magazine, and booklet design. It’s amazing how diverse magazine printing is – everything from art theory zines to corporate booklets can run through our printer – and yet, a common thread throughout is obviously the importance of visually arresting design.

Not actually run by gangs.

There’s a new Design Idea of the Week up, and it’s all about how businesses can collaborate on print advertising in order to build a sense of community. Products like multi-ad door hangers and postcards are great community-building tools, and by advertising collaboratively, businesses enjoy a very, very low bottom line.

What you probably didn’t know is that if you print with Hotcards, you’re already getting super low prices thanks to membership in a community: the gang-run printing community.

That’s right. You’re in a gang and you didn’t even know it! But don’t worry, this gang isn’t about any of that crazy ‘blood in, blood out’ stuff. And ‘gang-run printing’ doesn’t refer to printing run by gangs. In fact, it’s more about saving money, and doing something good for the environment.

Hotcards.com!

Check out the newest video from Hotcards full color printing! Now who wouldn’t want to print and design with such a talented, charismatic bunch?

My favorite thing about this video is that it shows off some of the print design work we’ve been doing lately. Everything from door hangers and direct mail, to restaurant menus and club cards get designed and printed at Hotcards. And ordered at Hotcards.com.

But how much will he benefit from a national ad buy?

Barack Obama’s advertising team has an unprecedented campaign advertising budget, and as such, they’ve got their fingers in a lot of pies right now. One of them just so happens to be the NBC Universal Olympic advertising pie.

Right now, nothing is set in stone, but rumor has it that the Obama camp has inquired about specific ad packages ranging from $500,000 to $4,000,000.

Whew. That might not represent a lot of Olympic TV ad time, but that’s a lot of print advertising.

(Don’t worry, that’s not this story’s only connection back to the world of election campaign printing.)

Advertising experts are questioning the campaign’s interest in the Olympics because the ads blanket such a large audience. The most effective election campaign advertising is very targeted, to the point where you could call it ‘niche’ advertising.

Full color printing is such an effective form of election campaign advertising because it does target specific communities and groups. As a rule, campaign advertisers won’t spend their budget appealing to areas that are already firmly in their corner, or areas that will never come around.

Expensive Olympic ad buys on network TV, of course, would hit both of these less desirable demographics.

However, it’s also true that because of the unusual nature of the ads (political candidates almost never advertise on network television), they have the potential to generate enough publicity to offset the drawbacks of the investment.

The question is, if Obama’s ad team begins to think nationally, will they have the resources, and the focus, to dedicate to areas where niche marketing would make a great impact?

Archive of an era, or two, or three…

Fliers. What does that word bring to mind? Maybe pilots dressed in those old-timey bomber jackets and goggles. Or, if you’ve ever attended a non-mainstream concert, club event, rave, or ‘party,’ maybe the word ‘fliers’ evokes some ultra-cool club kid, swinging by your lunch table, smoke break, or bus bench and thrusting a sheet of folded paper, covered in lurid images and DIY typography, into your lap.

They’re inexpensive and often, they look it, but few items in the print media arsenal are more evocative of full color printing’s ability to spread the word quickly and thoroughly. For event promoters, flier printing is a dream come true: super cheap, easy to design, and easy to distribute.

I’m getting all nostalgic and teary-eyed on the subject because I just came across a very cool collection of fliers dating all the way back to 1989, courtesy of super-producer and DJ, Scotto.

From a printing perspective, it’s fascinating to scan through the collection and actually get a visual presentation of how design and printing techniques have changed over the years.

In 1989, full color printing was far from available to every business and every budget. It was still extremely expensive, and most low-cost printers (a.k.a. Xerox machines!) were only offering single color designs. Concurrently, colorful paper was often employed to brighten up the limitation of the ink. Starting in about 1992, the full color designs begin to appear, and design style shifts to accommodate.

At almost the same time, a transition occurs from a lot of hand-drawing, collage, and simple type-based designs, to fliers created using professional graphic design software. It’s at this point when original artwork begins to pop up more and more in flier printing, demonstrating how technology has freed, rather than repressed, the artistic spirit.

It's simple.

One of the new design interns at Hotcards created this video about printing business cards, and I thought it was so great that it deserved a spot up here on the blog. Enjoy!

Get to know us a bit better (we're not robots!).

When you order full color printing on the web, it can be kinda scary. Who are these people you’re entrusting with first business cards, your concert posters, your campaign door hangers, your wedding invitations?

What if, you think, this company is full of really mean people? Or what if they’re not people at all? What if they’re robots that don’t care if your printing is done on time – that don’t have an eye for those little details that take a project from good to great? Or, worst of all, what if there’s actually nobody there on the other end of your order? No one to pick up the phone? No one to care about the thank-you card you send?

To alleviate some of these and other web-based full color print order concerns, the totally-non-robot folks at Hotcards have started to put together some videos, introducing themselves and life around the Hotcards office. Check it out.

You can see more on our YouTube channel here. And hopefully, as we go along, we’ll get our very own full color printing video player, because we’re just fancy like that.

I’ll post links to new videos up here on the blog. Until then, here are a few more shots from around the office: