Paper currency. Chocolate chip cookies. The Smartphone.
What do all of these things have in common, you might ask? Well, they all started as an idea that turned into a life-altering innovation.
But, an innovation doesn’t have to be something as complex as creating Samsung’s Galaxy, or coming up with a way to maintain monetary policy; it can be as easy as baking a batch of homemade cookies.
At Structural Graphics we recognize that innovation is a major component to the success of a business, not only to provide our clients with new and creative solutions to their marketing challenges, but to provide solutions to the challenges we face internally in our company as well. Thus, the Structural Graphics “Innovation Team” was born. CEO Michael Maguire selected 10 employees, from all different backgrounds and departments, to form this Team whose sole purpose is to “create anything new that has impact”. For our company, innovation could take place in the form of a product or service, a process, or the way in which we interact with our customers.
The first task for the Innovation Team was to “think outside the box” and come up with an innovative way to re-organize an open space that wasn’t being used. After some brainstorming and collaborating, the Team transformed a dull, closed-off area into a terrific space with lots of natural light and places to display creative work. The “Innovation Space” became an area where employees can hold meetings, collaborate on projects and, most importantly, share projects (personal and professional) with their colleagues. You may not have known it; but we have lots of artists here, painters, poets, musicians and more.
The Innovation Team has some exciting projects they’re working on now. Members have split up into groups to take on projects the Team sees as having the greatest opportunity for innovation in our company right now. Projects include new and exciting updates to our company website, a company-wide recycling project for employees to become more environmentally conscious, and a plan to alleviate bottlenecks in our current internal prepress process workflow.
This is just the beginning. The Innovation Team holds lively and interactive meetings twice a month where all ideas are welcome, and usually a tasty dessert is shared among co-workers. This Team will act to provide Structural Graphics with innovative solutions to our current challenges. Keep a look out for some of our upcoming projects, and remember that innovation can be found anywhere; all you need is a great idea and the ability to “think next” (chocolate chip cookies definitely help too).
Picture: the Innovation Team in our newly redesigned innovation space.
(Front Row) Michael Maguire, Jenna Paternostro, David Komorowski, Karen Signor, Warren Yamakoshi
(Back Row) Darlene Ferris, Jeff Nixon, Joe Migliaccio, Shin Wakabayashi and Edmund Wu
Structural Graphics, the pioneer of the dimensional print marketing industry is celebrating its 40th anniversary. The company introduced the world to dimensional print marketing in 1976 and continues to lead the interactive print marketing industry today.
As the world changes, Structural Graphics’ capabilities and service offerings have continued to evolve. Building on the company’s success in the insurance sector, The Lift Factor was established to deliver fully integrated marketing solutions utilizing print and digital executions for the nation’s top insurers. The Red Paper Plane division was created to provide a fast turnaround, do-it-yourself platform to buy Structural Graphics’ top selling formats online.
“The vast majority of companies never make it to see their 40th anniversary. The fact that we are celebrating this milestone here at Structural Graphics is a testament to the innovative products and services we offer, and our wonderful clients and suppliers. But most importantly, it’s a reflection of the creative, hardworking and talented employees that have walked through our doors over the past 40 years. Our people are truly our greatest asset,” stated Mike Maguire, CEO.
Structural Graphics markets its products and services nationally and in Canada, with its design and paper engineering, production management, marketing and administrative offices operating from the corporate headquarters in Essex, Connecticut. The company has sales and production operations throughout the U.S. and Mexico.
For more information or to view some of Structural Graphics’ work, please visit www.structuralgraphics.com.
Life is better when you’re laughing. And when that laughter supports a charitable cause… what’s better than that?
The teams at Structural Graphics and Red Paper Plane celebrate Red Nose Day, a fundraiser which supports Comic Relief. Each of our employees was given a red nose with which to participate.
Comic Relief is a major charity based in the UK, with a vision of a just world, free from poverty. Through the power of entertainment, we raise awareness and money to help kids who need us most at home and around the world. Red Nose Day is on a mission to lift kids out of poverty and has raised over $1 billion globally in the last 25 years.
Who designed the most innovative packaging of 2015? The Dieline, the premier website on packaging design, answered that question at their annual conference held May 19-22. This year, The Dieline Package Design Awards received more than 1,200 entries from countries all over the world. Out of those entrants, Structural Graphics took home First Place in Technology, Media, Office and Self-Promotion for the Google Box.
The Box will be on display all week at HOW Design Live’s Exhibit Hall at The Dieline Awards’ exhibit booth.
“I could not be more proud of the entire team here at SG as well as at Blanks for their tireless efforts in bringing this project to life,” said Alex Bates, VP of Paper Engineering and Design. (For more from Alex, watch our acceptance speech video here.)
The Story of the Google Box:
Last year, during the development of the Google Photos app pop-up book, we were asked through a string of emails whether or not we do boxes.
Psht. We practically invented them.
So on September 16, 2015, we kicked off the project with a call to discuss concepts. Google wanted a packaging piece that could hold products that would promote its new store. Collaboratively, what we came up with was a box that fit together like a puzzle. Each of the “puzzle pieces” contained a different product Google was seeking to promote. The entire box was later sent to major influencers who then vlogged and posted videos of the box on YouTube.
The Dieline Awards are an international design competition recognizing the world’s best consumer product packaging design. Now in its 7th year, The Dieline Awards 2016 has gathered a highly esteemed jury of structural packaging, design, branding and consumer product experts. The Dieline Awards names its winners based on three vital design components: Creativity, Marketability and Innovation.
On Tuesday, April 12 and Tuesday, April 26, teams from both Structural Graphics and SG’s online offering, Red Paper Plane, traded paper for wood at a build for Habitat for Humanity of Greater New Haven. Picking up saws, power tools and post-hole diggers, employees braved the rain while assisting the Habitat team on a new house project in the Westville area of New Haven.
Habitat for Humanity is a nonprofit organization that works to provide affordable housing to individuals and families around the world. Partnering with volunteers, Habitat has created and improved housing conditions for tens of thousands of families. Projects include home repair jobs such as painting, caulking and replacing doors or windows. Sometimes builds even involve the entire homebuilding process.
“I am so proud of Structural Graphics’ support of Raise the Roof and Habitat for Humanity for so many years,” said Michael Maguire, CEO of Structural Graphics. “Working side-by-side with a hard working family to help them realize their American dream is gratifying and important work. Through financial support, volunteer labor and countless contributions of signage and graphics for Habitat’s fundraising the events, Structural Graphics has set a wonderful example of giving back to our community – locally and around the world.”
Other organizations Structural Graphics supports include: Bikes for Kids; High Hopes Therapeutic Riding Academy; American Cancer Society; New London Homeless Coalition; The Shoreline Soup Kitchens & Pantries; The Autism Walk; The CURE for Breast Cancer and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
Habitat for Humanity builds are held regularly and are open to all those who are interested. Learn more about the Greater New Haven chapter by visiting www.habitatgnh.org or look for updates on Facebook and Twitter.
The holiday season is in full swing, and hand-in-hand with that comes gift-giving fever. That fever has spread from our holiday hearts all the way to YouTube, with the increasingly popular unboxing videos. According to ThinkWithGoogle.com,
Unboxing video views have grown 57% over the past year, and uploads have grown more than 50%. But it’s not just the growth in the unboxing genre that’s impressive—it’s the sheer volume, too. It would take more than seven years to watch all the videos on YouTube with “unboxing” in the title that have been uploaded so far just this year. And those videos have more than a billion views in this year alone.
Thank you, ThinkWithGoogle. That’s just what we did – we “thunk with Google”, to design and produce their Unboxing box. This was sent to hand-selected YouTube celebrities to promote the Google Store, and designed to have an element of surprise when unveiling each featured technology product. And the response was simply outstanding:
4 million views, with 11 million projected by Christmas.
And also, some sweet comments straight from the Unboxing YouTube celebrities themselves:
“That’s the best part, the packaging. ‘Gavin came in, and he’s like “This packaging is legit.’ And you know when Gavin thinks your packaging is legit, you’ve got a great product.”
Thanks, Gavin & Shay fam! And from Captain Sparklez…
“What?! This is the coolest packaging I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I don’t even want to disassemble this.”
We’re blushing! That’s the highlight, but let’s backtrack (spoiler alert: here’s where we start to talk about ourselves, boxes, and Google, a lot)…
Fast forward to September, when it came time to develop the box for their Google Store Unboxing Launch, they asked us whether or not we do boxes. (Answer: look here, or even here for a bit more luxury.) I mean this is Google, and we’re Structural Graphics, so naturally, we said yes. We practically invented boxes.*
(That may or may not be true.)*
On September 16th was the initial kickoff call to discuss concepts. At first, the sole and simple goal we had to accomplish was, “we need a box to hold products”.
Originally, we started with a white box with clouds. All of these 7 technology products, which can be seen in the Google Store, could have easily been thrown into any old, standard, 8-sided-vanilla-box. But that’s not really our style.
We then started with what any sensible person does in this day and age: we Googled it. We googled the Google products to get grasp on what it would need to hold, specifically the size, and how we could package that up.
As time went on, the inspiration developed. We were given a few more things to chew on:
1. Google presented us with a ‘Mood Board’, basically a brain dump of what it needed to include, and 2. What not to do: not a traditional printing press or corrugate. I mean, let’s be honest here, creative freedom + super cool client = any designer’s dream. Our brainstorm session produced a list that looked like this: Rubik’s cubes, puzzle, with the idea to create more of an ‘experience’ than anything.
Mission: possible. Erik, one of our paper engineers, came up with the puzzle box concept, and that’s when things with the entire team really took off.
As you can see clearly, it was all hands on deck! From a design and materials standpoint, this box was pretty far out of the comfort zone for our group. The materials and scale of this project was foreign. Typically, we deal with folding cartons, but every single person had hands on this project in order to turn around 2 sets of comps and “push the limits of design & engineering”.
On November 6th, upon assembly of the puzzle box, this was their reaction:
“Hubba, hubba!”
“Sweeeeeet, it’s really coming along nicely!”
“Woohoo!”
Of course, we echoed that.
So, the design was complete, but the job wasn’t over. Once these people receive it, what was the user experience going to be like?
There were a few small, yet critical details. First, was a card insert from the Google brand team, personalized & hand done with black Sharpie. Second, there was a little issue with the puzzle pieces, they didn’t quite stay together during shipment. Okay, thought our design team: how can we fix this? Why don’t we put it in gift-wrapping paper? Develop custom Google wrapping paper, which was actually functional. Genius.
Timing was a huge component for this project, considering it needed to drop by Black Friday. The second comp turn-around time was 3 days, and because of timing, we sent a template without sending a second comp. They never received a final produced prototype (only the press proof) before shipping to the influencers.
The night before delivery was crunch time. Gustavo, Vice President, Operations, and Teresa, Director of Business Development, left Mexico at 1:45am for delivery. They had 2 hours and 15 minutes to make it. From there, it was Fed Ex same day shipped, with critical care, and a contract with independent TSA couriers. Anddddddd, *sigh* just in time.
You might notice, if you’ve been paying attention to the timeline, that one of the most impressive parts of this story was the timing it took from concept to influencer delivery: 7 weeks.
“Amazing work under a brutal timeline.”
And just like that, that was it. 7 weeks. 7 products. 24 pounds without products, 35 pounds with products. Lots of hard work, and of course, a little bit of play…
You know, sometimes the last kid to be picked for the volley ball team isn’t always the worst.
And lately, a similar thing is being said about healthcare agencies at the ad industry’s top award shows. 4A’s Partner Award has pushed healthcare agencies into the spot light. We love you, healthcare agencies! (We even liked you before you became cool.)
“While not close enough to rub elbows with the Don Drapers and Peggy Olsons of the ad world, at least they’re being invited. This wasn’t always the case.
Even just in 2013, Advertising Age asked: “Are healthcare agencies and their clients the last group in the ad world not to attend the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity (arguably the Oscars of the industry)?”
But times change. And now (drum roll, please) the titular head of the industry itself — the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA or 4A’s), a 98-year old trade association has gone a step further. They’ve added a “Health & Wellness” category to their 2016 Partner Awards.
“And with this year’s Health & Wellness category we have the opportunity to honor the collaboration between agencies and organizations that promote health and wellness. Entries can include campaigns for corporate branding, education and awareness, and OTC, lifestyle, devices and pharmaceutical products.”
It’s a big market. In 2014, healthcare agencies garnered $4.3 billion in revenue up 10.3% from the year before.
Whoa.
Marylyn goes on, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and the rebounded agencies were more innovative and more diverse than ever before. In the interim many shops had changed the dynamics of their traditional deliverables, branching out into areas that emphasized collaboration.”
Essentially, healthcare agencies are the underdog.
All-told, it made for a perfect fit for the new 4As’ Partner Awards. The brainchild of the 4As’ Chief Marketing officer Alison Fahey, the Partner Awards were intended to be a reflection of the times. “We realize there are unique challenges that occur when individuals and companies with different personalities and cultures collaborate to achieve a common goal on behalf of a client,” said Fahey. “We wanted to salute those who put their egos aside for the greater good of creating meaningful work. As evidenced by the 4As Partner Awards 2015 winners, the very act of collaborating can elevate creativity to new levels. The jury did a great job of choosing the best creative collaborations in the marketing and communications industry.”
To enter the 2016 4A’s Partner Awards submit entries by Dec. 18, 2015. Winners will be revealed at the 4A’s Transformation Conference, March 22, 2016, in Miami, FL. For further details, please visit http://partnerawards.aaaa.org/
It’s no secret that when it comes to design and style with some extra POP, Structural Graphics takes the cake (or, in this case, the pizza). Some extra validation never hurt anyone, which is why we are so thankful to have been named winners of the Fibermark’s 21st Annual Specifier Best of Show Gold Award for our Bacardi Limited Dewar’s Influencer Kit.
The awards didn’t stop there, either! We were also recognized for excellent for our Samsung GS3 Mini Small Book Launch Kit, Samsung GS5 Gold VIP Launch Kit, Samsung Gear Fit VIP Launch Kit (see these at TheBoxSmiths.com). A special shout out goes to TracyLocke, the agency who we collaborated with on all of the Samsung projects.
Samsung GS3 Mini Small Book Launch KitSamsung Gear Fit VIP Launch KitSamsung GS5 Gold VIP Launch Kit
And… also, we are very thankful for the pizza party brought to us by the Fibermark team themselves, yum!
Pizza party!
This is the second award that our Dewar’s Influencer Kit has won this year, also winning a GDUSA American Package Design Award earlier this year.
Structural Graphics design team with awards
So often, the response to Structural Graphics is “Oh, the people who do all the pop-up stuff?”
We live and breathe “pop-up stuff”, we practically invented it! Many people are surprised to hear that we are doing way more than that, and getting recognition for it, too.
So, whether you need some pop-up stuff or packaging, you can call on Structural Graphics – anything paper is possible!
Looking for packaging that’s a little more luxurious? Visit The BoxSmiths for luxury packaging that performs.
Most likely, you’ve heard our spiel (and if you haven’t, you’re in luck): “Structural Graphics is the pioneer of the dimensional print marketing industry.”
“Okay,” you might be thinking, “that’s great. But who decided to take a pop-up and turn it into an ad?” Which is a reasonable question — it’s a pretty genius idea. Although it has been said that digital is taking over the marketing space, it’s undeniable that our work really POPS, gets attention and drives to digital.
Believe it or not, Structural Graphics did not start with an advertisement. It all started with a fascination of pop-up books and paper that led us to engineer a new medium for the world of advertising.
Paper house in pop-up book
When asked about how the company got started, Ethan Goller, president of Structural Graphics, had this to say:
“Structural Graphics was the first company ever to introduce interactive print collateral for advertising and marketing on a commercial scale, and so can claim having “invented” the medium for use in that space.” he says.
“I’m often asked, ‘how did it all get started?’ Company founder, Chris Crowell, had a background in the graphic arts and advertising. He also had a passion for movable (“pop-up”) books, and the notion struck him:
‘If you could take the interactivity, engagement and whimsy of a pop-up book and apply it to advertising, it would perform better than traditional (“flat”) print collateral.’
That was in 1976! And as we prepare to celebrate our 40th anniversary next year, stronger than ever in a business that has transformed dramatically to be relevant in a digital environment, we are proud to boast about our place in advertising history.”
Ethan sums it up perfectly. Times change. So does Structural Graphics. That’s why we were thrilled when Google came to us to produce a popup book for their new app, Google Photos. We can incorporate technology in print — videos, sound, web keys, NFC, you name it, or take it all the way back to our roots with our love for pop-up books.
We recently won four design awards as part of the 2015 American Package Design Awards, an annual competition hosted by Graphic Design USA (GDUSA) and sponsored by Neenah Paper. Continue reading →
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