News

May
02
2017

Merry & Bright Holiday Pack Wins at Print Industry Midwest Awards

We're honored to have been chosen "Best of Class" in the Cards category at the 2017 Star of Excellence Awards presented by Print Industry Midwest for the Merry & Bright Holiday Pack! This piece, completely designed and produced by Travel Tags, Inc., served as the company holiday card for the 2016 season. Customers and vendors received this multi-piece pack as a way to thank them for their continued service, to enjoy the holidays, and to remind them of the various printing capabilities and services TTI provides all year round.

For a complete list of PIM Star of Excellence 2017 winners, check out the May issue of Graphic News.

 

Creative Process:

TTI wanted their card to be fun and festive but also demonstrate some of their capabilities. As a gift card manufacturer, we decided to demonstrate several of our various printing capabilities and services: in-house design, card manufacturing with scent, lenticular design and print, and digital printing. When customers opened up their holiday card, they were pleasantly greeted with the scent of rustic pine.

Next, we decided to design the card/carrier piece. Our design team wanted to carry a rustic, classic design throughout all of the elements of the pack. Using craft paper with hand lettered elements kept it fun but neutral.  Along with the card/carrier was a lenticular (3D motion) ornament to hang on their tree, as well as some gift tagss for them to use in their gift wrapping.

 

The Merry & Bright Holiday Pack includes:

 

  • 5" x 7" carrier made of 80# Neenah Environment Grocer Kraft, handlettered by Sara Hynes Designs
  • 3.375" x 2.125" (CR80), pine scented, laminted, affixed to carrier
  • 3.125" diameter circle lenticular ornament with a 3-dimensional side-to-side visual effect
  • Set of 4 gift tags, digitally printed on 24pt. Tango C2S paper, diecut with 1/8" holes for string, perforated for easy seperation

 

Like what you see? We'd love to discuss design and execution with you for any upcoming campaigns! Shoot us an email at info@traveltags.com.

 

MEDIA CONTACT:
JEFF HORST, Creative Director
JJHorst@traveltags.com
651.288.8494

TAGS:   Awards / Recognition, holidays, Printing Industry Midwest (PIM), trends

Nov
29
2016

VR Will Be A $38 Billion Industry By 2026

Virtual reality will be a bustling industry by the middle of the next decade, but getting to that point will take some time, according to a study released today.

The new 10-year industry forecast from Greenlight Insights and Road to VR suggests the VR business will be "very modest" through 2018, and in an "inflexion zone" for the next five years before blossoming to $38 billion in annual revenues by 2026.

An oft-cited study from Digi-Capital had concluded that the VR industry would be worth $30 billion by 2020.

But despite the rosy industry forecasts, more than half of the report’s industry respondents said they expect to bring in less than $1 million in VR revenue in the next 12 months, and just 45.2% think they’ll be profitable in that time frame.

As the number of VR hardware platforms has grown to include the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Playstation VR, Google Daydream (and Cardboard), and Samsung Gear VR, among others, one of the biggest concerns about the health of the consumer VR industry has been a dearth of quality content.

That is changing as more and more content is developed, but the report suggested that the lion’s share of industry revenue will still come from hardware sales. Overall, the authors wrote, about 62% of revenue will come from sale of headsets, VR cameras, and other gear.

Within hardware, meanwhile, VR cameras are expected to bloom from less than 1% today (for devices like Ricoh’s Theta S or Samsung’s Gear 360) to about 12%, or $4.6 billion, by 2026, Greenlight and Road to VR predicted.

At the same time, there will likely be a "broad transition" away from VR headsets with cables—like the Rift, Vive, and PSVR—to cordless systems starting in three to five years. Some of those systems will still depend on being linked to a separate computing device, like a phone. But the report suggested that standalone headsets with built-in computing could become a major category within the sector by 2021.

Already, however, Facebook-owned Oculus and Microsoft have talked about standalones, though neither have shared timeframes on when they expect to release their devices.

Another significant shift in the industry is expected to come in 2020, the report concluded, when revenue from consumer-related VR experiences like games will be surpassed by enterprise experiences like workforce training.

"The enterprise market will become the largest part of the VR industry," the authors wrote, "accounting for nearly a third of total industry revenues from all sources by 2026."

[Continue reading at Fast Company online.]

 

Source: fastcompany.com, November 2, 2016 - by Daniel Terdiman

MEDIA CONTACT:
KATIE SINSKY | MARKETING DEPT.
651 554 8533
KRSinsky@traveltags.com

TAGS:   trends, Wearables

Nov
23
2016

2016’s Best Gift Cards

Gift cards are supposed to make gift-giving simpler, reducing the need to worry about the recipient’s tastes and what specific items he or she might already have. But not all gift cards are created equal, which might help explain why nearly $1 billion in value went unused in 2015, despite gift cards being the most popular type of present for the ninth consecutive year.

So in the interest of helping you find the best gift cards for any occasion – whether a birthday, holiday, graduation, etc. – we [WalletHub] compared the 50 most popular options across five major categories: 1) card popularity; 2) average discount; 3) average resale value; 4) retailer appeal; and 5) shipping fees.

 

2016's Best Gift Cards

1. Amazon Gift Card
2. Visa Gift Card
3. iTunes Gift Card
4. American Express Gift Card
5. Walmart Gift Card
6. Target Gift Card
7. Starbucks Gift Card
8. Google Play Gift Card
9. Netflix Gift Card
10. eBay Gift Card

[Check out the rest of the TOP 50 list at WalletHub.com and the Methodology behind this year's findings]

 

Source: wallethub.com, November 10, 2016 - by John S. Kiernan

MEDIA CONTACT:
KATIE SINSKY | MARKETING DEPT.
651 554 8533
KRSinsky@traveltags.com

TAGS:   holidays, trends