Neenah Paper Think Ink, Brian Crooks's Portfolio

Neenah Paper Think Ink

2009

How can Neenah Paper reinvent their coveted ThinkInk promotional book in a way that would retain its usefulness as a print reference, position Neenah Paper as an industry leader and sell more colored paper?

We wanted to give designers a reason to keep coming back to Neenah paper. The previous book was very useful, but designers always looked to it at the end of a project. We wanted to give the designer a tool that would make them come to Neenah at the beginning of the design process.

We created a multi-platform (print, mobile and web) promotion that would help designers capture inspiration at the beginning of a project. The print piece encouraged designers to go outside and find inspiration in the world and the iPhone app allows designers to capture that inspiration and turn it into useful color information. The application uses that image to generate color palettes with color psychology attributes, allows users to download the color palettes for use in their designs, and provides matching Neenah Paper recommendations. Samples of the matching papers can then be ordered right from the iPhone.

Working on a small team meant I had to fill a lot of roles. I was part strategist, part art director, part designer. I developed our initial concept for the iPhone app and worked with the team to extend it across all the platforms in a meaningful and functional way. I lead the architecture and user experience for the app and designed or art directed all the visual components.

The iPhone application had 62 million media impressions in 6 weeks, close to 100,000 app downloads, and the press release was displayed on the Reuters jumbo tron in Times Square. Pretty good for a paper company.

Completed at And Partners.