Paper Engineering and Cardboard Engineering Techniques and Promotional Marketing

Whitney Woods owes a large part of the success of its range of promotional marketing products to the imaginative use of very basic paper engineering and cardboard engineering techniques. By adopting a common-sense approach to the cardboard engineering content in the pop-up products in the range we have avoided many production pit-falls. We adopt this same approach when being asked if we can produce paper engineering masterpieces – also known as commercial nightmares. In other words, keep it simple - keep it affordable. We like our commercial cardboard engineering to be more “Blue Peter” than “Origami Master”!

Cardboard Engineering Products

Keeping things fairly simple allows us to offer fairly unique promotional products at a price that is competitive with other cardboard engineering products in the promotional marketing arena. Simple paper engineering techniques such as V folds and parallelograms are at the heart of many products and some of the most effective promotional pop-up cards that we have made are based on the most basic cardboard engineering techniques.

Bespoke pop up cards use “V” folds and Parallelogram Cardboard Engineering

Bespoke pop-up cards are popular with corporate customers particularly when the pop-up item cannot be reproduced as a 3-D piece of cardboard engineering. (Reproducing a shape in two dimensional stand-up or pop up form is much easier and therefore less expensive than an intricate 3-D creation.) When producing bespoke pop-up cards the two main mechanisms are the “V” fold pop up and parallelogram stand-ups. The use of these simple but very effective formats helps to keep assembly costs down. From time to time, other cardboard engineering movements may be brought into play such as pull tabs and rotating wheels but once again, the cardboard engineering methods employed are kept simple for rules of economy.

Creative Ideas for Cardboard Engineering and Pop-Up Products

Having said that we like to keep things simple, we encourage your suggestions to add creative cardboard engineering mechanisms - a cut here or a fold there - to any of our promotional products as your own creative ideas can change the whole concept of a promotional pop-up. It can be quite surprising just how much can be added to the design of a basic folded leaflet with an extra cut and fold. Our own compliments slip, for example, tells much more about us and what we do with a very simple cardboard engineering cut, crease and fold! And who knows – you might have hidden talents as a paper engineer. However, you must remember to keep the cardboard engineering simple. If you make it over elaborate you can double the cost of your job without doubling the sales impact, which doesn’t make sense.

Pop-up Books with intricate paper engineering are not up our street!

We cannot stress just how labour intensive certain examples of cardboard engineering can be. Let's take a look at some of the most complex pop-up books that are available in good bookshops today. There are many examples of some of the most fantastic pop-up displays and movements - absolutely brilliant work. However, complex paper engineering pop-up books are virtually all produced in Asia, South America and Central America depending on the publishers' choice of market. In simple terms, it is just not commercially viable to produce such elaborate paper and cardboard engineering books in the UK. The cost of the pop-up book in your local bookstore would be absolutely astronomical.

All Whitney Woods Promotional Products are Hand Made in the UK

We do not claim to be origami masters nor even highly skilled paper and cardboard engineers but producing pop-up products for commercial use as we do precludes the use of very intricate cardboard engineering mechanisms as the costs of hand assembly would become prohibitive. We keep cardboard engineering simple and affordable but very effective from a promotional marketing point of view. We are proud of the fact that all of our promotional pop-up products are completely handmade being assembled right here in the UK by skilled local labour. Most of our skilled hand assembly workers have been with us since we started making promotional pop-up products over 10 years ago and many have been here even longer when the hand work skills were concentrated in the area of hand finishing to the print industry.

Helping our clients with new bespoke cardboard engineering projects

Unfortunately we are not in the business of bespoke cardboard engineering and paper engineering product development. There are dedicated paper engineers and cardboard engineers out there who make a living from taking on such commissions.

However, if we can help to guide you by pointing you in the right direction or giving instructions on how to create a pop up product or a product based on cardboard engineering techniques then we will “hold your hand” as far as we can through the design and prototype processes.