Photo CutOuts Blog

Bigger, better, faster

January 8, 2019January 8, 2019 admin

It’s all go here at Photo Cutouts! We have just bought another brand new large format printer that enables us to print your boards in record time, and with the best quality and colour reproduction in the business. We’ve also invested in some more top-class cutting and laminating equipment to enable our experts to make an absolutely perfect board every time.

large format print promotional materials — Our awesome new printy thing

Why have we invested in this new machinery? Because we need it to supply the ever-growing demand for face in hole boards! More and more businesses, charities and campaigns are adding the simple idea of a face in hole board to their promotional arsenals because it’s a great way to draw people in and encourage them to interact with the brand.

Marketing promotional branding print — One way to distract children before they see the dentist!

It can be a simple as an off-the-peg board to help create an atmosphere – see the range of themes on our site. Or we can add some personalisation or branding to one of these boards, which is quick and easy. Alternatively we will use a design that you provide, or design it for you ourselves as a full bespoke service. We make space-saving folding boards, cutout props of any size and shape you want, and even AR boards that come alive with an app. If it’s large-format free-standing promotional props you need, we’ll print them for you and ship them out in a matter of days.

Promotional cutouts and standee props print — Make it big, bold and larger than life! (As you can see, it doesn’t have to be a rectangle)

Our success with face in hole boards has proven they are one of the best ways to get a public image across and communicate a message. Your design or our design – we’re happy either way, and now with our industry-leading new equipment we can print and deliver your board to you even faster than ever!

Face in hole board marketing — You’re safe with us!

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Garden centre chain puts Snow Globe boards to good use

December 12, 2018December 12, 2018 admin

Snow Globe boards add Christmas cheer

This week’s blog post is about how a business used Photo Cutouts boards to promote its stores and gave customers a fun experience at the same time. It’s the story of how a garden centre chain boosted its public image with a co-ordinated set of our Snow Globe boards distributed across 22 of its branches. It’s also the story of how you can do the same to promote your business.

Snow globe christmas face in hole board — This is the Snow Globe board before being customised with the customer’s message.

Klondyke & Strikes Garden Centres like our Snow Globe board so much they ordered 22 of them – one for each of their branches in England, Scotland and Wales. For use during the festive period, the boards are placed strategically at each branch to encourage visitors to pose in them and take photos. The sharing hashtag for Instagram, Twitter and Facebook is #KlondykeSnowglobe.

To tempt customers to share their photos on social media, Klondyke & Strikes are running a ‘Show us your best festive face’ competition with a prize for the best snow globe photo. Customer have really gone for it – just look at the Instagram page for the hashtag #KlondykeSnowglobe and you’ll see how well the campaign is going!

Snow Globe scene — Some of the Snow Globe layouts are absolutely gorgeous.

We really love what Klondyke & Strikes have done with the snow globe boards. Face in hole boards have a vintage feel, and these scenes are examples of real old fashioned window dressing which has always been a vital part of retail but which so many other stores forget to do well. We wish them every success with their seasonal campaign and hope that these beautiful displays make customers feel like spending more! It just gives a nice warm fuzzy feeling for customers that their staff have gone to all that effort, doesn’t it?

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Exhibition stand boards boost engagement

November 28, 2018 admin

Take a stand with a face-in-hole exhibition board

We’re always going on about how good our exhibition stand boards are for boosting brand awareness and encouraging engagement. After all, what’s not to like about giving people a chance to literally get into your brand? Well, you don’t have to believe us – just listen to our customer Rentalcars.com, who had a 3m by 2m board at the Travel Counsellor’s Annual Conference in Glasgow earlier this month.

“The event went great thank you, the photo cut out was very popular. It looked great, the colours are so bright and clear. I’ve put a few pictures below, thanks so much for your help with this. I would have no issues using yourselves again in the future.”

Thanks

Janine.

The bright & clear colours are due to our brand new printing method, which gives the best colour reproduction available today. We printed this particular board from the client’s own artwork. From what Janine tells us, it helped to draw people to their stand and start conversations by giving them a fun photo opportunity. A Photo Cutouts board could do the same for your brand at your next exhibition! And don’t forget, photos get shared, which means further exposure for your brand!

We also make smaller and more portable face-in-hole boards than can be folded up and carried under your arm! They’re easy to carry to exhibitions and then pop open and are ready in minutes. Here’s an example of one used recently. UK Mediation took it to the CIPD Annual Conference earlier this month. The 100 x 180cm size was just right for their stand layout.

UK Mediation said in their exhibition announcement, “We’ve been hard at work developing our fully-customised exhibition stand. There will be activities to take part in, including an interactive game, and some fun photo opportunities that are sure to make you smile! We promise that it’s going to be SUPER!”

The photo opportunity was the Photo Cutouts board – always a hit at expos.

Want one for an upcoming expo? Get in touch!

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Theme of the Week: Animals!

November 12, 2018November 12, 2018 admin

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.

Animals horse Liverpool — A horse in this board for the Liverpool International Horse Show.

animals horses — This board for Retraining of Racehorses features … you’ll never guess.

Animal board horse — This three-hole board was used at Chepstow Racecourse.

Animals horse — More horses – this lovely board was for Sense charity to use at the Badminton Horse Trials.

Donkey ride seaside — All right, this is a donkey. But it’s an equine, right? This traditional seaside board was used by The Sun newspaper.

Seaside donkey animals — 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!

Photo cutout board animals dogs — This one was for Xero, featuring their actual office dog Jinty!

Animals dog full fact milk — Full Fact Milk’s campaign featured a sheepdog. And a cow, obviously.

Dogs board animals vets — A rather naughty woofit running off with sausages in this board for Vets4Pets.

Sheepdog animals Yorkshire Day — A trusty sheepdog features in this board for Yorkshire Day 2018.

RSPCA animals dogs board — A cartoony dog is one of the animals in this board for the RSPCA.

Huawei Chinese New Year animals dragon dog — A Chinese New Year board for Huawei featuring what we think is a Shi Tzu.

Animals dogs face in hole boards — 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.)

Fish animals — Don’t be Koi, take a look at this lovely board for the Japanese Water Gardens!

Fish board charity — This board was for the For Fish’s Sake campaign, run by Hubbub.

Dolphin Octopus animals — This board for the Ellen MacArthur Foundation has a variety of marine life.

Animals shark — Sharks are fish, right? This one was for Nuts Go Row, who rowed the Atlantic for charity!

Animals crab — 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.

Bees animals promotional board — 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!

oinkfest pigs animals — Three little piggies in a board for Oinkfest!

Animals cows ice cream — Cows grace this board for Isle of Arran Ice Cream.

Bat Halloween — There are bats in this Hallowe’en board.

Animals rooster board — Dusty The Rooster, designed by Aardman, features in this board for the London Wetland Centre.

Animals face in hole board — 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!

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Theme of the week: veg!

October 26, 2018October 26, 2018 admin

An entirely meat free blog post

autumn veg — Some suitably seasonal veg yesterday.

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!

As always, a face-in-hole board is one of the simplest and most effective ways of conducting awareness campaigns. Here are five other public awareness campaigns that have used Photo Cutouts boards at events.

Tideford Organics

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!

Veg promotional board — 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!

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Make everyone a magazine cover star!

October 18, 2018October 23, 2018 admin

Get people into your magazine – literally.

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.

First Wonder Box Latitude Festival — 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!

Prommotional marketing magazine cover star — 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!

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Across the board: the variety of Photo Cutouts this month

September 27, 2018September 28, 2018 admin

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!

Snow globe Christmas marketing variety — 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!

Variety is the pies of life — 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.

Variety of face in the hole boards — 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.

Photo cutouts for marketing and branding rebranding — 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.

Face in the hole cutouts for use at sporting events — Forestry Commission – Whinlatter, Cumbria

Coming soon: boards for Pontins, Amazon, and most importantly the British Dragonfly Society!

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AR boards: more interactivity than ever!

September 11, 2018September 11, 2018 admin

Our new AR boards use technology to come alive!

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!

Find out more about Photo Cutouts AR boards here