Both Rebecca and I have been attending more networking events recently and one question we are guaranteed to get is, “Do companies STILL print things?” It’s almost to the point that I have a flat, red spot on my forehead after the number of times I’ve facepalmed myself.
I could understand being questioned about the relevancy of our company if we were trying to sell replacement parts for Edsels or running a Blockbuster Video, but the value of print is something that we see all the time.
Case in point…
This past weekend, Avengers: Infinity Wars opened and, per usual, I joined a couple of family members to see it opening night. I make no apologies for being a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie junkie. I’ve spent the past 40+ years of my life waiting for movie technology to catch up with the comic books that geeky, young teenage Dean enjoyed decades ago, and not even Iron Man 3 is going to dim my joy.
So, what does this have to do with print design? Well, as we walked into the theatre we were handed a commemorative 28-page Moviebill booklet.
And you know what? We all took it and as soon as we reached our seats, all of us opened it up to look through it; just like everyone else in the theatre.
There is something that we respond to when we get our hands on a brochure, program, etc. and you can see/feel the quality of the piece. This Moviebill was well designed and had a textured finish on the exterior cover that felt almost like velvet. The paper they used, particularly for the cover, had a good weight to it and practically screamed out, “We spent some decent money on this.” (I do think the name is a little on-the-nose, in terms of cost of the tickets. The only name that could have been worse was Moneytickets.)
Now, why did they choose to do this? We already bought our tickets. This wasn’t incentivizing us to come and see the movie. However, what it did was two-fold, it commemorated the movie, making it feel a little more special, and it gave us something to take away as a marketing tool. Make no mistake, they want you to both keep the Moviebill and they want you to buy/download the items advertised in it.
As we have mentioned in posts like this, good design is essential to elevating the value of print. The entire reason I took the brochure and held onto it was the quality of the design (great cover, layout, substantial feel to the paper).
However, and it’s a big however, it’s very clear that nowhere near the same amount of time and care went into crafting the content.
Obviously designers can only work with what they are given and I believe they did their best, but it felt a little like a perfectly prepared eclair that is missing its filling; it looks good, but is ultimately unsatisfying.
The content needed to be approached with the same kind of nerdy, deep-dive, fun energy that the design embodied. If the quality of the content matched the design quality, I would probably hang onto this at least until Avengers 4 next year.
The other big miss/oversight was the way they handled the “scan this page to play this game/see this graphic/watch this clip/buy this music” elements. You first needed to download a specific app and, once you did that, you could scan these pages to “unlock the movie magic”.
I was game for trying it, but unfortunately this was where things went south pretty quickly. The app wasn’t designed very well, which made for a confusing experience, nor was it clear what app even needed to be downloaded. When I finally was able to scan the page, it was essentially a 3-D rendering of the various characters standing on the Moviebill. Rather than enhancing the experience and bringing more value, it suddenly felt like I was holding a dime-store trinket.
Driving the reader from the page to a website can be a great pairing of these 2 mediums, however, when the quality of the content doesn’t deliver, it ends up cheapening the overall brand.
The design and printing did what they were supposed to — they gained my interest and attention, and established the promise of something special inside. Unfortunately, the content didn’t deliver on the promise and potential of the design.
This piece accomplished exactly what a printed piece is supposed to, and it’s a great example of why print still has a role in this overwhelmingly digital world. I can guarantee you that I wouldn’t have spent ANY time looking at the same content if it were available online.
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