One of the fun things about working with clients is being on the receiving end of requests where you think, “It seems easy enough …” knowing there will be more to it than appears at the surface. Designers face this daily when client’s say, “I have just one little change …” but rarely is it as easy and quick as described. We perform our client miracles that usually go unnoticed and happily move on to the next one. It is what makes us go.
Recently we have been involved with printing drink coasters. The first few requests required about 800 of them with crazy deadlines ranging from proof approvals on Friday and must ship on Monday to approved on Thursday and ship on Tuesday. Scary timing on these so we rushed to the finished line using materials tried and true and moved on…sort of. We printed them two sided on house 1/8” plastic stock and cut to the shapes and sizes of the art provided. Ideally we would have printed on a true coaster stock (the absorbent paper kind) but it turns out finding parent sheets of this stuff was not as easy as thought.
After quite a bit of digging we finally found a supplier who can provide what we need in the large sheet sizes so we can efficiently print and profile trim these things. If you do a google search for coasters you will find 1000’s of folks who offer this service. What you will not find is many who can take your art, to your custom size, to your custom shape and then produce that combination. That is what I think makes this discovery so great. For example if you want to create a series of drink coasters in the shape of a bottle, heart, whisky glass, bow tie logo, you name it, there is a great chance we can now do that. Kinda makes you thirsty doesn’t it? I am hoping someone in the drink industry, wedding industry or promotional industry will help us take this service to a new level with more fun requests.
