Enchanting Booklet Brings Awards, More Business Once upon a time, a printer teamed up with a design firm and an illustrator to create a marketing brochure that rivaled the most enchanting of fairy tales. The book was filled with clever limericks and colorful characters. The designs were delightful. And the production techniques were so realistic, you wanted to touch and savor every page. The brochure swept up awards in printing and design competitions across the land. More importantly, it won scores of new clients for the trio of contributors. The story begins in 2003, when Steve Harney, president of Quality Printing, Anderson, Ind., was toying with ideas for a new promotional piece. Tired of the standard capabilities' brochure, he turned to Planet 10, a design firm and frequent customer based in nearby Indianapolis, to gauge its interest in collaborating on a more innovative project. Planet 10 principals Mike and Jennifer Tuttle were intrigued, but not quite sure about the direction the project should take. They decided they wanted to work with a local illustrator or photographer to root the promotion in their corner of the Midwest. After brainstorming, the Tuttles remembered seeing the work of Greenfield, Ind., illustrator Chris Sickels in a design publication and invited him to come on board with his whimsical, trademark "red-nose" characters in tow. Sickels was wary, however, because he hadn't worked with Planet 10 or Quality Printing. "He had had some bad experiences where printers or graphic designers wanted to use his services, and in turn he was going to get a brochure or something," Harvey says. "It had never panned out for him." But Sickels had been thinking about ideas for a children's book, writing limericks on frequent flights between Greenfield and Los Angeles. He saw potential in bringing those limericks to life through the proposed collaboration and signed onto the project. "It didn't take a lot of convincing once he found out more about us and we showed him what we were going to do," Harney says. The final product is an 11 x 14-inch booklet, saddle-stitched with a real red thread (a printed red thread winds its way through the entire piece). The booklet highlights the talents of all three contributors, while doubling as children's book titled Hey Fred! Nice Red Thread. The cover features an oval die cut that showcases an illustration of Fred, one of Sickels' signature puppets that he first draws, sculpts, then photographs along with tiny props. Eight interior spreads feature a different character with a supporting limerick and a production technique tailored to that scene. For instance, the spread featuring "Shane" reads, "Shane wanders around in heavy rains wondering about the weightlessness of walnuts in outer space," with Shane looking skyward with outstretched arms. Sickels created the rain with a milk jug full of water suspended over the puppet as he shot the scene. Harney brought that rain to life with a satin aqueous coating and spot UV gloss. Other spreads feature embossing, debossing, die cuts—even a pop-up for "Ivan," who "flew away in a bucket rigged with fans and rubber bands." Every page has potential for unlimited special effects, and the Tuttles originally specified something special for each scene. In the end, the team decided to use restraint and focus their time and money on effects that truly enhanced the stories. "The deciding factor was, is it going to add to the artwork, or is it just something we're putting on the page to show another thing you could do?" Harney says. "We started pulling in the reins if it didn't seem like it was going to be a big contribution to Chris' artwork." The project took nearly a year to execute. "We had a lot of good things going for us, though: It was well thought-out, we had a lot of time, and the people involved just cared a lot about what the end piece was going to be—they worked very hard at getting it right," Harney says. The initial print run was 2,500 pieces, 2,300 of which they've already distributed, and they plan to print more this year. Quality Printing invested about $50,000 in the project, which covered the cost of materials (mostly dies), printing and design. That figure excludes Sickels' expenses; the firms traded services to cover those costs. That may seem like a hefty sum to invest into a single marketing project, but it has paid off. In addition to the accolades the book has received from notable design publications and prestigious competitions (most recently Sappi Fine Paper's North American Printer of the Year Gold Award), it's also brought in several new accounts for Quality Printing. The most lucrative is a grand-opening invitation for Caesar's Forum in Las Vegas—a $40,000 project. Have a solution? Click here to be featured as an E-Weekly Solution of the Week