A Closer Look at Our Blast From the Past Self-Promo Kit

Printing ProcessMarketingBusiness Development

Aug 26

We don’t ‘toot our own horn’ very often at FGS, but this project was too fun to avoid bragging about it a little. We’ve been sending out a lot of samples recently and wanted to come up with a more cohesive feature of our capabilities.

Concept

We wanted something that showcased what we can do with some cool pieces but also make samples fun! After throwing around some ideas we decided we wanted to do a throwback to our childhood, and the Blast From the Past Kit was born.

Content

Once we had the theme, the next step was determining what capabilities we wanted to feature, and what nostalgia-fueled items could do that. With feedback and input from the whole team we were able to develop a few items that united our creative department and print production capabilities:

Trading Card
Cootie Catcher (Fortune Teller)
Perfect-Bound Composition Notebook
Spiral-Bound Coloring Book
Laminated Bookmark
Activity Pad
8-Bit Sticker Sheet

Production

Serving as a ‘Greatest Hits’ of what we can do, production of the kit leveraged the majority of our production equipment and everyone on the team had a hand in putting it together.

Foil Finishing

Our first ever Felix trading card features foil finishing. We create a black layer that the foil adheres to, as shown below. We then print over the foil. This card features a border and diamonds that are just the silver foil as well as the background that is silver foil with the blue overprint.

Digital Printing

As a full-digital shop, all of our pieces feature digital printing. For our cootie catcher, we printed on a gloss text stock ready for folding. See the video below to fold yours!

Perfect Binding

Our mini composition book features our perfect binding capability. The cover is printed as one piece and the text pages are adhered using glue to give the novel-like structure we all know and love.

Coil Binding

Our coloring book features our coil binding capability for easy lay-flat coloring. Each page is printed 1-up and then they’re all hole punched and bound with the plastic coil.

Lamination

Our 90s-style bookmark showcases our flush lamination, making the piece more durable and giving it a plastic coating.

Padding

The activity pad showcases padding, each sheet printed and the edges glued to form a small pad that can easily be flipped through and torn off as used.

Wide Format Printing

Our 8-Bit sticker sheet shows our wide format printing and die-cutting capabilities. The press uses the colored lines to tell it where to cut — pink line signifies a full cut (the edges of the sticker sheet) and blue lines indicate a kiss cut - cutting the sticker to be able to peel off, but not clear through the paper.