Nathan Atkins, managing director of Papergraphics, talks about relationship building for creative exploration.
Personalisation is currently one of the hottest topics in the print industry. Whether you’re targeting consumers or businesses, personalised merchandise, apparel and textiles present great opportunities. We’re particularly excited by the commercial interiors market and how printers, designers and even artists can work together to create truly unique environments. However, as with any industry, to be successful you need to have a good understanding of how to get the most from emerging trends.
With businesses, hotels and restaurants among those looking to wow their customers with unique experiences, this demand presents a fantastic opportunity for designers to craft masterpieces designed to create a specific atmosphere or provoke certain emotions. We're all familiar with traditional wall coverings, such as a city skyline, which are nice aesthetics that add a new dynamic to a room, truly successful projects go far beyond this. However, there are several steps that need to be taken to achieve this.
The first stage is to identify the atmosphere and feel that is desired. This is where interior designers come in to the process, which presents our first challenge. They need to fully understand and appreciate what surfaces are at their disposal and what can be achieved using today's printer technology.
Unfortunately, as an industry, there is not a huge amount of effort put towards working with interior designers as they are not seen as direct customers. This is a hurdle that we are really looking to overcome. As part of this, we’re increasing our presence in the interior design community through attending exhibitions and networking with the designers to educate them in how to create different atmospheres using print.
Once this awareness is generated within the interior design industry, the next stage is providing content - the actual art needed - which is where the artists come in. This is the second challenge, because traditional styles of artwork aren't designed for the array of possibilities we are capable of achieving today.
Generally, imagery and design is created as flat 2D rectangles, but when you want to create a joined-up environment using floors, upholstery, ceilings, lighting, blinds, glass manifestations, and more, the content needs to become unique. Artists need to take advantage of this opportunity and see these spaces as their new canvases, fully embrace the possibilities of them and generate content that becomes part of the fabric of the building.
Over the past years, we've worked with artists to generate awareness, which as a by-product creates new revenue streams and outlets for the artists themselves. Insa and Ben Allen are two artists we've built close relationships with that is helping to promote the possibilities today's digital print has for artists.
But this is just the beginning and as a new generation of talent comes through, it's important that they are not being taught to use the same rectangular, 2D mentality. To help overcome this, along with our new OEM partnerships, we are launching new exciting initiatives, focused on creating awareness of this new format for art - a format that can utilise today's technology to transform space into truly unique places that inspire customers or workforces.
True interior personalisation incorporates all of these factors and when done in a collaborative way, delivers huge margin possibilities for PSPs. As a specialist in this field, we are one of the few who are able to provide more than just the boxes of media and hardware, we believe we can play key role in helping our customers take advantage of these trends through our unique combination of education, training, support, medias and equipment.
In addition to our UK application centres in Crawley and Paisley, we’ve recently been organising educational trips for our customers to visit HP's head office in Barcelona. These events are designed to help PSPs to understand more about the strategies, challenges, intricacies and tools needed to be successful in the interior decor market.
To ensure the long term success of the printing industry, it’s important that we’re all adding value for our customers. For us, that means providing PSPs with more than just boxes, containing equipment or consumables. It's actually about helping businesses capitalise on the opportunities available and ensuring they are in a position to achieve their potential.