Every week I shop at Harris Teeter, as well as a few other grocery stores. And over the last several years--being a student of commercial printing, marketing, and design--I have paid close attention to store branding. I've been very impressed with Harris Teeter's presentation. There's nothing like visiting local businesses on a regular basis to get a sense of just how store design and product design interact and work on the buyer's conscious and subconscious awareness. When done well, this makes people want to shop more and buy more. I can appreciate the skills and knowledge required.
I'm a sucker for free promotional items. I understand how they work. I know they keep the brand in front of me as I use the items on a daily basis. But, guess what? They're useful and they look good. So I still like them.
As I think back over the last several years years of print brokering work, I realize that a rather large percentage of my clients have been self-funding their commercial printing projects. They're entrepreneurs.
On our way home from a standee installation at a movie theater last week, my fiancee stopped the car abruptly and jumped out. She grabbed a cardboard box covered in what appeared to be hand scrawled black Sharpie lettering and drawings. After commenting that I didn't want to go to jail for stealing garbage, I put the box in the back seat, and we sped off. Needless to say, the box now lives in our front room, an example of pop art and corrugated board printing.
My fiancee brought home an intriguing circus print book from a thrift store yesterday. In addition to being all in French, which adds an air of romance to the already beautiful images of horses and costume-clad performers, the book includes the handwritten signatures of a number of the actors in black marker, on their individual pages. The 8” x 10” format, saddle-stitched book also has a striking front and back cover treatment: a gloss coating on the horse and circus name (on the front cover) and two silhouettes of acrobats on the back cover, also gloss coated.
I can't remember the last time I canceled or postponed a commercial printing job mid-flight, or at least right before the job went to press. It's demoralizing, but depending on why it's done and how it's done, this doesn't have to be either the end of the project or the end of the relationship with the printer.