Festival Season is here!

We have recently discovered this rather unusal but equally wonderful portable speaker system. This tiny device deploys highly effective vibrations to convert any flat, hard surface into a quality audio speaker.... for example, a box or a bottle or even a car! When used with a corrugated card, it delievers a great quality sound oozing with bass. Everything from pizza boxes to juice cartons can be transformed into a speaker and hearing really is believing!
You can watch the video here.

Going Gaga!

It's all go-go over Gaga this end as we launch into production of the new Lady Gaga illustrated biography for Essential Works.
One of the wonders of the modern age, the biography not only charts her life story through hundreds of fabulous photos, but also looks at the people who inspired the phenomena we know today as Lady Gaga.

Printing in China we are all set and ready to go and can't wait to see the finished result!

You can read all about it and get a sneak preview of the content here.

Pimp My Book!

We are currently busily working away on our first augmented reality projects and it's a very exciting time for us!

We've had lots of meetings with our technology partners discussing all the options sat amongst the 3D TVs, black glasses and webcams and we are buzzing with the potential, features and capabilities of the media. Infact we are struggling to think of a book that would not be enhanced by augmented reality!

One thing that has come up is the possbility to 'retro fit' augmented reality into an existing title without the need to re-originate the entire book or large chunks of it. One of the requirements of augmented reality is a high contrast image to act as the trigger which is best as black and white. Printing loose cards which can be used interactively with the relevant page and incorporating them into the book can work really well and also means you don't need to have the book under the web cam to activate it. It’s also perfectly possible to recognise a 4 colour image and use this as the trigger but the costs are that much higher it's best avoided at the moment!
There is just so much we could talk about - and no doubt we will - but for the moment, feast your eyes on this beauty from BMW showcasing some of the best augmented reality to date.

Safety PIN Launched!

Our new safety blog has successfully launched!
Available on a subscription basis the blog will be updated monthly or more reguarly as events unfold, to bring you real time safety news relevant to the publishing industry and even giving sneak previews of the new regs to come! Our contributor is Diane Greaves, who many of you will know from Imago's Safety courses.

The initial take up has been good and the site is now only accessible to subscribers. If you would like to know more you can click on the image for a overview of the site or contact us here.
Subscriptions are available on a yearly basis for £250 and with the continuously unfolding events of the new European Toy Safety Directive we plan to bring you the latest updates in layman's terms which we hope will prove genuinely useful.

Bookery Takes off in France

What is Bookery you say? Well it’s the latest term coined by our Paris office to neatly summarise the current French trend for Cookery Books Plus!

We have produced some amazing sets for the French market and it seems to be very much on trend at the moment. There has been a huge increase in the number of ‘Coffrets’ (Box Sets) in the last couple of years, over a wide variety of subjects but most noticeably around the theme of cookery.

Ali becomes our new Australian Sales Director

We are very pleased to announce that Ali Wheeler has been promoted to Sales Director heading up our Australian office.

Ali first joined imago UK back in January 2004 as a Senior Controller in Sarah’s team.

When the opportunity arose out in our Australian office, Ali was first on the plane and has since made a whole new life for herself on the other side of the world. She has worked enormously hard and we are all very pleased for her with her well deserved promotion.

Pictured below Ali (hiding slightly) with her team + William and Anthony from our Hong Kong office.

Did You Know....

This week is rabbit awareness week.... you can find all all about it here....:

How do we know? Well not only is the beautiful countryside in which we are lucky enough to work full of the little creatures, but we are also very proud to be involved with Rufus Rabbit - a new rabbit on the scene currently taking the greetings card market by storm!
Rufus is the latest creation from The Little Dog Laughed and he has already stolen our hearts...