A Much Tougher Road
Done in: Spring 2019 / Customer: Association for Print Technologies / LeadingPRINT magazine / Task: Story Design
What the client needed
There is an expanding business opportunity for printing companies to have portions of their projects printed in the countries where the materials are going to be used (versus adding the massive difficulty of import/export rules and costs.) Al Kennickell leads a forward-thinking printing company (The Kennickell Group) that finds profitable opportunities in areas of the world most USA based printers refuse to go. That willingness has led him to places and given him access to accounts with a world-wide reach … and some pretty consistent profits.
My part of the project
Telling a “not normal” story required an out of the box idea, and in this case it was provided by one of my genius friends who pre-read the article, (I want to give credit where credit is due). His idea was to spend some money on a photoshoot, dress Mr. Kennickell in waders and have him stand in a swamp like an explorer.
Fortunately Al is a great guy with a genuine sense of humor and he played along with the idea. Once the photography was in, we rustled up a stock picture of a gator and cloned the gator into the water behind Al. That, some binoculars, a walking stick, and voila!
The extra expense was well worth it. The cover and opening spread splashed with attention-grabbing impact at the next industry trade show. Had we only been able to work with pictures of Al’s plant and some of his work displayed it would have been an “industry standard” story, but in terms of design, this is much more satisfying and it sells the story.
