Today is National Print Day, and we’ve got good and bad news to share with the community. Let’s get the bad news out of the way first…
Oct 23rd, 2013 will be the last National Print Day we celebrate. Yes, we know, we’re terribly sad and disappointed, too. But dry your eyes because you haven’t heard the good news yet…
NPD will be replaced by an even bigger, better, more organized effort next year known as International Print Day 2014!
The first ever IPD will take place on 10/8/14, and the theme will be “What Print Means to Me”. Henceforth, IPD will be held annually on the 2nd Wednesday in October, which means the ink holiday coincides with the weekly #printchat session on Twitter. There are lots of plans in the works, and we welcome your ideas as we prepare for a global celebration of all things CMYK.
What Happened to National Print Day?
By now you’re probably wondering, hey what’s going on here? If you’re feeling confused by this announcement, welcome to the club.
It all started a few weeks ago when I stumbled on the National Print Day website. As soon as I saw the site, I got super excited. I eagerly headed to the media section to download the 2013 poster, only to find the same old artwork from the previous year still sitting there. Puzzled, I turned to Twitter and talked to a few of the most active people in the industry. They informed me that they also noticed a lack of activity from NPD team. In fact, Deborah Corn of the Print Media Centr personally tried to get in touch several times, and received no response. RUDE!
Deborah and Jamie McLennan of the Seibel Group decided no one should be able to declare a community holiday, then abandon the idea after less than a year. So they took to Twitter and let the PEOPLE decide how to handle the situation. The rest is printing history!
What You Can Do to Help the Cause
Even though today’s pretty much awash, we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us for 2014. Together we can make this a huge success, but we need to ban together for the greater good. We tossed around promotional ideas in #printchat; here’s what we’ll need from volunteers:
- Print Presenters – We need people and companies willing to put together presentations for a free webinar/virtual event.
- Poster Design- Anybody with excellent creative talents, please step up to the plate! We need a print ready poster in 11″ x 17″ and 22 x 28. Of course everyone’s welcome to make his or her own posters. What I’m talking about would be an official design people can download off the IPD website.
- SOCIAL ACTIVITIES! – Forgive me for shouting… I get a little carried away when it comes to social media. There’s already an IPD Facebook page (LIKE IT!) and a Twitter account (FOLLOW!). I strongly encourage you to get involved by liking, sharing, RTing, and contributing your own content to the conversation. Use the hashtag #IntPrintDay and remember that we’ve already got a great theme for you to work with. We always need bloggers, press releases, etc., but why not integrate offline tools as well? Send out postcards to local colleges and universities with design programs. Host an educational seminar about print marketing for your clients. Whatever you do, don’t forget to broadcast the message with emails, articles, and social updates.
Happy National Print Day from PrintFirm.com!