PaperSpecsGallery.com Presents: IDEO Snapshots 'Unboxed' (Video)

"Leaving a well designed physical artifact behind more often than not still makes a bigger impression (maybe even more these days) than something digital." — Eric Heiman, Volume

Want to break through the fugue state in which your potential clients find themselves after years of digital fatigue? Hand them a chunky block of your best work tucked neatly between covers that feel more "Etsy" than "business as usual." The IDEO Snapshots package that Volume came up with for the Palo Alto design firm infuses the traditional recent projects brochure with a dramatic sense of "unboxing."

Consisting of 25 5.5x7.5˝, double-sided cards — each digitally printed — the package neatly lays out dozens of IDEO's recent design projects from around the globe. An engaging photograph and breezy call-out on the front of each card is backed up by everything you could possibly want to know about the job on the back: What was the challenge? How was it met? What did the client think of the outcome? This information is further spiced up by fun and informative factoids sprinkled throughout (e.g., a project required the creation of "87 digital mockups").

"Admittedly there was a digital component to this project, too, but the print component — with its multiple job cards — allows IDEO staff to engage people with their work in a very tactile and direct way in pitch meetings," explains the project’s co-creative director, Eric Heiman. And since the cards are digitally printed, "it was created to allow for rich formal expressions that could also be easily executed by IDEO’s in-house design team when it needed to make updates."

In this fourth edition of IDEO’s Snapshots series, Volume also "eliminated the excess box packaging in favor of a more utilitarian solution that is more in line with IDEO’s design ethos," Heiman points out. This was accomplished by the inclusion of two chipboard covers, each black foil stamped on both sides, the entire package secured by an elastic band bearing the IDEO name.

While they faced a number of challenges with this project — including cleanly foil stamping chipboard with fine line work and small type — the creative director admits, "Printing on rubber bands is trickier than you would think."