Sadie

In recent weeks TV ads have been aired in the UK which show characters appearing from pop-up cards and pop-up books and this has created an upsurge of interest in cardboard engineering for promotional and marketing purposes and particularly in custom made promotional pop up cards. This is good news for the UK's cardboard engineering industry but here's a note of caution for creative designers - keep things simple to keep your job affordable.

The level of affordable cardboard engineering for promotional applications is much more akin to Blue Peter than to Origami Master. You see, most promotional pop up products are printed, die-cut and then assembled by hand in the UK and even though the cardboard engineering techniques are kept relatively simple, the hand assembly is very time consuming.

When you get hold of a children's pop up book featuring very intricate pop up mechanisms it is certain that, whilst it might have been designed and written in Britain, the book itself will have been produced in Asia. The cost of producing the same book in the UK would make it too expensive for UK bookshops.

Fortunately, from a promotional point of view, some of the most dramatic effects used in the production of pop up cards are created by very simple mechanisms such as the "V fold". Using the instance of a standard A5 four-page card, a V-fold can give you a very impressive centrefold pop-up figure which can be up to 190mm high and 270mm wide! However, most product advertising would call for something rather less ostentatious but creating equal impact for the all-important first impression.

Another cardboard engineering lifting mechanism that is common in promotional pop up cards is based on a parallelogram and this is used to make the figure stand up rather than to pop up but it still adds an important extra level of creativity to what might otherwise be a fairly bland marketing piece.

There is no need to shy away from cardboard engineering as most cardboard engineering companies are happy to help you with the mechanics of your own promotional pop up card in order to make the design process as simple as possible. Most companies can supply samples of items that they have produced on behalf of other clients. Just remember the golden rule - keep it simple and affordable. Trying to be extra clever can sometimes send the costs soaring without making a whole lot of difference to the card's impact on your customer - and remember, your customer's impression of your promotion is the only one that really matters.

There are a number of specialist manufacturers of promotional pop up cards in the UK but the one that seems to pop up most on web searches is Whitney Woods, a company which publishes a very comprehensive range of pop up mailers and interactive marketing pieces all of which have been created using cardboard engineering techniques.

Article by Paul Whitney.

Whitney Woods Ltd is a manufacturer of promotional marketing products designed using sophisticated cardboard engineering techniques. The company is a market leader in this field in the UK and publishes a range of over 50 products covering the areas of promotional pocket media, interactive marketing products, information discs, promotional pop up cards, creative folding and automatic pop up mailers. Whitney Woods also publishes a range of products which are particularly suited to Christmas promotions and for use as company Christmas cards. In addition, the company incorporates a direct marketing division incorporating a full service mailing house and also supplies eyeletting and hand finishing services to the UK's print industry. http://www.popupmailers.co.uk