Nerding Out On Print: A Memoir
This month we created a book called the “Nerd Out” and we want to explain to you why we did it…
“Nerding Out” … you know what it is. That intense love you feel for a certain subject, you can tell anybody ANY and EVERYTHING they want to know about it. It comes from the same kind of passion you see in sports fans who do things like punch jerseys if their favorite player makes a dumb mistake.
And, it is why we run around here saying things like “Is that a spot color on that?? LET ME SMELL!!!… ” and we often steal samples of cool print jobs from each other. We want THAT cool thing in OUR OWN office, for ourself to love on. It could be a custom diecut of a toilet, with a foil emboss of a plunger beside it, a spot UV of water overflowing out of it and an emboss of a dirty diaper beside it and I will have to physically restrain myself from framing it.
EXAMPLES OF HOW WE NERD AROUND HERE:
“Did your customer use a custom stock on that job? YEAH!!! That. Looks. Awesome!!”
*steals a sample and hoards it in office”
“I just wrote up a job for a set of debossed greeting cards with two spot colors. That is going to look SWEET.”
*loses mind*
Nerdiness aside, a lot of these custom choices customers are using to make their print piece a little beyond average, actually offer benefits beyond just looking cool. Many of these extras, like stair-stepped pages, transparent pages with interactive graphics, etc. offer the user holding the print piece a better experience.
A cover stock might ensure a heavily used piece will withstand the test of time, stair-stepped pages ensure a better user experience by jumping from section to section easier, etc.
This year, instead of creating a Mid Year review, we created more of a Mid Year “Nerd Out” – Our chance to show you our favorite projects and share with you all of the little tidbits and extras that really make this piece something cool. The book is full of the projects we’ve been regularly releasing on the website. We even took advantage of the spirit of the piece and got a little, ok a lot, Nerdy with the book creation.
You can view the book design and all of its Print Specs here.