Tiger and panda in a promotional board for Animalz face masks.
Looking back at the photo cutouts we’ve made, we’ve realised that they often feature animals. The reasons for this are as varied as our clients, but it seems that many charities, brands and products have chosen to feature animals in their photo cutouts. It’s the same in advertising. Think how many brands have an animal as their mascot. So this week we’re featuring our animal friends. Welcome to the Photo Cutouts zoo!
Horses
A four-legged friend will never let you down – and neither will we! Here are some equine boards from the last year or two.
A horse in this board for the Liverpool International Horse Show.This board for Retraining of Racehorses features … you’ll never guess.This three-hole board was used at Chepstow Racecourse.More horses – this lovely board was for Sense charity to use at the Badminton Horse Trials.All right, this is a donkey. But it’s an equine, right? This traditional seaside board was used by The Sun newspaper.More seaside donkey rides – this time for the Sandgrown Family, part of Blackpool Better Start’s campaign.
Dogs
Man’s Best Friend has featured in quite a few of our boards. We like to do tricks for our customers!
Detail of one of our boards for the Dogs Trust. Good boy!This one was for Xero, featuring their actual office dog Jinty!Full Fact Milk’s campaign featured a sheepdog. And a cow, obviously.A rather naughty woofit running off with sausages in this board for Vets4Pets.A trusty sheepdog features in this board for Yorkshire Day 2018.A cartoony dog is one of the animals in this board for the RSPCA.A Chinese New Year board for Huawei featuring what we think is a Shi Tzu.
Does this one count? This board for the RAF gives a new meaning to ‘dogfight’!
Fish and other aquatic life
Our aquatic friends have also graced several boards. Check out these fin-tastic images of fish! You’ll be hooked! (I’ll get my coat – Editor.)
Don’t be Koi, take a look at this lovely board for the Japanese Water Gardens!This board was for the For Fish’s Sake campaign, run by Hubbub.This board for the Ellen MacArthur Foundation has a variety of marine life.Sharks are fish, right? This one was for Nuts Go Row, who rowed the Atlantic for charity!Don’t forget the nippy crab in our traditional seaside board of Skinny Jim!
Bees
Where would we bee without bees? Here are two boards that have helped to create a buzz.
BeesNeeds used this board at their week-long campaign on London’s Carnabee Street.This is a client design by Plan Bee, before we cut the face holes out.
Other animals
Here’s a smattering of other members of the animal kingdom who have featured on our boards. Noah would be proud!
Three little piggies in a board for Oinkfest!Cows grace this board for Isle of Arran Ice Cream.There are bats in this Hallowe’en board.
Dusty The Rooster, designed by Aardman, features in this board for the London Wetland Centre.Bunny, chick and lamb in one of our Easter boards!
That’s it for now, but there are sure to be plenty more animal boards leaving our production facility. Do you have an idea of how to use animals to promote your product, brand, cause or business? Got a ‘pet’ project you’d like us to turn into reality? Get in touch to throw us a ball, and we’ll fetch it!
Leaves are plummeting off trees, the thermometer is shrinking back into single figures and crisp misty mornings are becoming the norm. Autumn is defined by its plump vegetables: pumpkins, onions, parsnips, mushrooms and other tasty things you just want to roast and whizz up into a thick, warming soup for the chilly months ahead.
This week we’d like to show you a couple of boards we’ve made recently which are for different purposes and niches but which share a theme: crunchy, healthy vegetables! One board is for an awareness-raising campaign encouraging people to go veggie, and the other is for an organic food company who specialise in veg.
The Vegetarian Society
You are what you eat, so this board invites people to ‘become’ vegetables! It was used by VegSoc at a major food fair. Needless to say, the board drew a lot of people to the VegSoc booth, because people just can’t resist having their photo taken as a carrot or a leek!
This company make scrummy organic vegan soups, sauces, pestos and misos in their kitchens in Devon and sell them around the UK. They are also an awareness campaign really – just look at their board! It shows how a plant-based diet cuts your carbon footprint and saves water, which helps Tideford Organics to sell more of their tasty and environmentally friendly products. It’s a win-win for this company, and their board was a winner too!
This is an example of our new folding board, which as the name suggests folds in two for easy transport and storage. Perfect for taking to exhibitions and fairs!
It’s nearly the weekend, so if you’ll excuse us we’re going to veg out now!
We’re happy to make photo cutout boards to whatever specifications our customers ask for – the imagination and variety are endless! But we’ve noticed that over time, patterns emerge that represent segments and sub-segments of the market for promotional cutout boards. This week’s theme is … the giant face-in-hole magazine cover. We’ve made quite a few of these for magazine launches, campaigns, corporate events and just good old marketing, and they seem to be a hit.
It can be as simple as getting a mock-up of the magazine’s front cover from the publisher, printing it and cutting out one or two face holes. Others can involve more design work from our in-house design team. Whichever way, the result is always big, bold, colourful and fun – and a great way to promote a magazine. We’ve got folding boards, hand-held boards to pass around, full-size boards, and boards without face holes for people to ‘stand in’ as the cover star – the range of choices grows all the time.
Here are some of the magazine cover boards we’ve made recently. Check out the fun and see if you’d like one for YOUR publication!
1. Group Leisure & Travel
Everybody wanted to be part of ‘the world’s best looking group’ at the Group Travel Show at the NEC. This is a full-size board with metal feet that people can stand in from behind – our stock-in-trade and a sure fire winner.
2. The Week Junior
Engaging curious young minds, The Week Junior magazine is a multi-award winning current affairs magazine for 8 to 14 year olds. They often use our photo cutout covers for new issues at promotional events.
3. First Wonder Box
Another children’s current affairs publication is First News – they used our boards to launch First Wonder Box, themed boxes bursting with learning and fun. Young people were happy to pose in front of the board if they didn’t quite reach the face hole – after all, we can only cut the hole at one height! This is an example of our folding board that folds in half to save space and make it more easily transportable.
You can lead a horse to water …
4. Vaillant
Heating and cooling firm Vaillant used a Photo Cutouts board at the launch of their in-house magazine, Advance. This is a ‘selfie board’ – lightweight and portable, designed to be passed around for anybunny to use!
Even Vaillant’s bunny mascot somehow got in on the act.
5. Love Sewing Magazine
This one was a real hit with women dying to pose on the front cover! Rather than have a face hole, we left the main image blank so that people could stand in front of it. And boy, did they!
Need to promote a magazine? Come to the experts – Photo Cutouts. We can start talking about a design today!
As we head into Autumn the pace and variety of production at Photo Cutouts is showing no sign of slowing down. Indeed, we’re gearing up for Christmas now as Britain’s brands, causes and businesses seek to attract their share of December trade. Last week was a frenzy of production and delivery as we made and shipped twenty-eight of our Snow Globe boards to branches of a major garden centre chain!
The garden centre boards are like this one, but with customised text on the brass plaque. This particular board was in use at the NEC Festive Gift Fair last year.
Here is a small sample of the variety of other boards that have gone out this month. These are ones we can tell you about because the events they are used at have already happened. We keep the others under wraps until the events!
Xero
Accounting software firm Xero like to involve the whole firm in their event planning. Here they feature the office dog Jinty as their mascot on a hand held selfie board involving said dog and a large pie. Sometimes customers just tell us what they want and we do it!
Dog vs pie
Rip it Up
National Museums Scotland is running an exhibition called Rip It Up which celebrates the story of Scottish pop. A variety of bands like the Rezillos, Simple Minds, Franz Ferdinand and The Proclaimers feature in the exhibition and a number of associated events.
Celebrating Scottish pop and rock with National Museums Scotland
Rize
Rize is a rebranding of The Health Club Collection, and what better way to raise awareness of a new brand than a photo cutout board? This board was used at a launch event at a London health club.
The ’80s are back, apparently!
Cairngorms
The Cairngorms National Park uses these cute Lego mascots to promote the region’s many attractions.
Tour of Britain
The public got the chance to be a ‘stage winner’ at the #forestfinish stage of the Tour of Britain in Whinlatter, Lake District.
Forestry Commission – Whinlatter, Cumbria
Coming soon: boards for Pontins, Amazon, and most importantly the British Dragonfly Society!
Our photo boards are the ultimate in getting people to interact with a brand, cause or message. They put their faces in them, after all – that’s about as interactive as you can get with your clothes on. But we’re always pushing the envelope here at Photo Cutouts. We’ve come up with selfie boards, folding boards, photo walls … and now, AR boards!
How are these new boards even more interactive than our regular boards? Simple. They have a code printed on them that is recognised by an app that anyone with a smartphone can download. Point the smartphone at the board, and it comes alive with animations, videos and messages that can be personalised to your events!
‘AR’ stands for Augmented Reality. This technology superimposes animations over a scene viewed on a smartphone or tablet screen to make objects appear to be in the scene. Remember the Pokémon Go craze in 2016? That was AR. Players hunted monsters in the real world that would appear to be ‘there’ in the app, superimposed on, say, a street scene.
Our AR-enabled boards have an extra dimension of fun because when viewed with the app, they come alive with animations and messages. Check out the video above for a simple example of our AR boards in action. By the way, we’ve called the product ‘Virtual Reality Boards’ because some of us thought people would understand what they are more quickly that way. Strictly, they are AR rather than VR, and we know that – so please don’t write in!
With these photo boards you don’t need any special equipment like VR goggles, and you aren’t going to be stumbling into things and falling over as you navigate a virtual world. All you need is an AR board and a smartphone. Download the app and point the phone at the AR boards, and watch it come alive!
Here are a few of the festivals that have used our photo boards this year. From the large to the small, festivals are events that require branding and exposure. A great way to get people to participate in marketing and popularising a festival is to have one or more photo cutout boards made. They can be placed strategically around the event itself or used in public places before the event to drum up interest. They project a professional image of the event and can carry its main strapline as well as all relevant branding information, such as logos, images, hashtags, web addresses, emails and phone numbers. And here’s the good bit. People love to interact with photo boards, put their faces in the holes and snap funny photos which – guess what? – get shared on social media, bearing the festival’s image and message. The internet does the rest.
Here are some on the boards we’ve done this year for this type of event.
1. Wannabee, the Spice Girls Show at Frimley Lodge Live
Frimley Lodge Live is an annual music festival in Surrey Heath. We made this board for Spice Girls tribute act Wannabee.
2. Oktoberfest
Beery Teutonic oompah-and-lederhosen event Oktoberfest is growing in popularity here in the UK. It’s easy to see why. What’s not to like about sausages, sauerkraut and endless gallons of beer? This board from our Seasonal Range is off-the-peg for Oktoberfest and was used at several events last year. We can add branding for specific beer festivals by request. And the great thing is, it’s beer-proof! The Foamex PVC board doesn’t absorb liquids and can be wiped dry.
3. Bury St Edmunds and Halifax Food & Drink Festivals
Hear ye, hear ye! Local food, drink and business festivals can really benefit from photo boards. People see them around town and they help to raise awareness of the event. It’s simple really. Add the interactivity and fun of them being face-in-hole boards, and they can quickly build up public interest in a local festival. Probably cheaper than employing a town crier too.
Bury St Edmunds Food & Drink Festival
Halifax Food & Drink Festival
4. Chinese New Year
The seasonal Chinese New Year festival is well known throughout the UK. The event can be used for marketing, which electronics giant Huawei have done with this board.
5. Camp Bestival
Family festival and camping experience Camp Bestival is loads of fun for kids and their adults. They used this board well in advance of the event as well as at the event itself.
We’ve got lots more boards for festivals in the pipeline, but we can ‘t tell you about them yet because the events are still to happen!
Halloween party boards: you’d be bats not to get one
Fresh for this year, we’ve brought our Halloween face in hole boards up to date by making them a bit more cartoony, with some cheeky little details. Hire or buy one to add extra fun and photo memories to your Halloween event.
As always they are made of weatherproof, durable foamex PVC board with a high-quality image printed onto it. The feet are sturdy aluminium and keep the board upright in moderate winds. We cannot guarantee them against vampire and werewolf attacks, but you’ll be pleased to know that tomato juice and pumpkin flesh wipe off the boards easily.
PhotoCutouts team members out for blood
Halloween event planners can hire or buy these designs off-the-peg with rapid delivery to the UK mainland. They can also order custom boards with added features such as messages, slogans, logos, hashtags, web addresses, phone numbers or other information. We can adapt an existing design to include this branding information or do a completely new, one-of-a-kind custom design that will never be repeated!
The new boards in the seasonal range have three face holes. If it is preferable to the customer we can cut out just two holes and leave the rest of the artwork intact.
Planning Christmas already? Get your face in the ho-ho-hole!
Like Halloween ghouls, Christmas is also sneaking up on us and will soon have us in its grasp. Well, we also have a new range of Christmas boards that we have re-designed for 2018. Get your face in the ho-ho-hole with our festive boards featuring Santa and his pals. Here’s a post all about our awesome Christmas boards.
Christmas guests are going to LOVE our new snow globe board!
The ‘hole’ point of face in hole boards is to take photos – that’s why we call them photo cutouts. Our boards help to create great photo memories of Halloween parties and events!
Face in hole boards are always a hit at children’s events!
Photo cutout boards are always an attraction at events involving children. For these events, we make the board an appropriate size and height and cut out the face holes so that small people can reach them to put their faces through. There are also Selfie Boards that have no feet but are held at eye level, which eliminates any height issues.
Kids ‘get’ face in hole boards straight away (so do grown-ups – maybe that’s why they are so popular.) The idea is just so simple and effective, ad the results are usually pretty funny. That’s what makes Photo Cutouts such a great photo opportunity!
Here are some examples of photo cutout boards we’ve produced for children’s events recently.
Dusty’s Puddle Jumping Championships
We are rabid fans of Aardman Animations, so when we got a call to make a board involving a character designed by them, we jumped at it. Into a puddle! Dusty’s Puddle Jumping Championships was organised by London Wetland Centre and supported by the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust. Before jumping in muddy puddles to see who was the best at it, children were photographed in this board as a reminder of how much fun they had that day.
Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust
Sailing superstar Ellen MacArthur’s charity helps children and young people regain their confidence after cancer. This fun interactive board is used at their live events to promote the charity’s message with its Twitter, Facebook and Instagram handles.
Professor Shambles
A classic Punch and Judy board for children’s entertainer Professor Shambles. This is one of our stock seaside boards with the customer’s name, tagline and phone number added.
Now Press Play is an immersive audio resource that engages primary school children in the curriculum through emotion, imagination and movement. This hand-held photo cutout board helps to promote their technology.
So those are a few examples of photo cutout boards for children’s events we have created recently. To order one for your kids’ event, call Photo Cutouts on 08450 570 321 or email us.
