Crowd Sourced Print Centric Innovation

A couple of days ago an interesting thing happened on social media. It started on Twitter then moved to G+.

On twitter there is a group of us, @GraingerEd in Canada, @Ddrrnt in Oregon, that have been chatting over the last year or so about the problems in education. Sean Grainger (@graingered ) is a leading educator in Alberta. He did a brilliant post on Bullying. 

About a week or so ago, we seemed to have hit an inflection point. @menghe a brilliant designer joined our little band. It's an under appreciated fact that Brilliant - not pedestrian - graphic design is the defensible value.  After a couple of days of back and forth on twitter, and then a real focused conversation at G+ , Menghe presented this poster on Bullying.

If things go as planned, A printed version of this piece will be available at Jason Pinto's booth some time during Graph Expo.

Print Centric Innovation

As we chatted more about the poster Menghe did, it seems that we may have stumbled on a product that could do well while doing some good.

Another member of our little band is @Sandyhubbard . We've been having a long back and forth on Twitter about Print as the Medium of Common Sense. The fact is the Print medium is slow. It sits quietly in the background waiting for the user to engage. Unlike "social media" it does not create the expectation of a response  Now.  All you need to do is compare the image you find on this screen with a printed version available at the show to prove the point to yourself.

But the point is to do well in the service of doing good.

The format of the image should enable non profit organizations to get their message out and still allow magazines to earn money from placing the ad. Each of the twitter persona and QR should be easy to sell to corporations also trying to do well. If the charge for an ad is $2000, each position could be sold for a minimum of $500 or more. 

Do well. Do good. is the best way to integrate social media into Print. 

Stay tuned for more Print Centric Innovations to #HelpPrintThrive.

UPDATE: Sept 15

It turned out that things broke just the right way.  @raffel stepped up to get us through the last mile at the show. The other piece was quick response from @HPIndigo. Short story it was printed at GraphExpo yesterday. For the non printing nerds, GraphExpo is the biggest Print Industry show in the USA... at least for now.

 It says to me that Crowd Sourced Design can be couple with Crowd Sourced Manufacturing. Of course this is a tiny example, depending an the caring of many individuals.

But it seems to me it demonstrates what is now becoming possible.