knitting

Let’s Get Creative

Meghan Cordella4 Comments

While portfolios and business brochures are relatively common publication types on MagCloud these days, there are a number of other unique use cases we see where publishers take advantage of MagCloud’s high quality print and digital distribution to serve their business needs. Today we’d like to share a few of these with you, and hopefully spark your creativity for your own MagCloud publication.

Calendars
As discussed in our post earlier this week, we usually see an uptick in the number of calendars published on the site around this time of year. These calendars show off everything from family portraits to product imagery, and with the MagCloud storefront and print on demand capability we’ve seen some successful calendar fundraising efforts. Plus, now that we have our smaller digest format, MagCloud calendars can be ultra-portable or even expanded into daily planners. If you’ve been looking for a place to get started on your own calendar, check out our 2012 calendar templates.

Annual Reports
Another timely publication type we see on the MagCloud site is the annual report. These run the gamut from smaller startups who just want to print up a handful of copies for investors to larger companies that want an easy way to make their report available online with both print and digital options. Our standard-sized perfect bound publication is particularly well-suited to this use case, since its heavier cover stock and square binding offers a more professional look and feel.

Holiday Greetings
MagCloud also offers a great way to get in the holiday spirit with a pro-quality print and digital family newsletter that gets published and distributed just in time for the holidays. Combine your Holiday Newsletter publication with our Ship to Group feature making it easy to send one copy of your publication to a group of addresses. If you’re looking for tips to make your own holiday greetings through MagCloud, check our blog post from last year for templates and instructions.

Cookbooks
Recipe collections are another popular MagCloud publication type, serving the purpose of business promotions, community fundraisers, and wedding favors. With options for ordering print copies and downloading onto mobile devices like the iPad, MagCloud cookbooks are easy to keep close at hand in the kitchen. To help you get started on your own cookbook, check out our prior blog posts with templates and instructions for Adobe InDesign, iWork Pages, and Microsoft Word.

Workbooks, Manuals, and Guides
A number of publishers have used MagCloud to print field guides, camp workbooks, how-to guides, training manuals, educational workbooks, and operations manuals to complement a variety of business needs. In some cases these are printed ahead of time for use during a workshop or class, while other times they are simply made available online for attendees to purchase as supplementary or stand-alone training materials.

Programs
We see programs of all kinds published on the MagCloud site for events like weddings, plays, memorial services, conferences and music festivals. Our new digest product is particularly well-suited for this use case, since its smaller size is less obtrusive and fits more easily into bags and purses.

Menus
Another great business use case for MagCloud is a menu. Our full color printing helps show off vibrant food photography, while the on-demand printing makes it easy to order copies in small batches as they are needed and make changes between print runs.

Knitting Patterns
There are a number of publishers on MagCloud creating knitting pattern publications. We’ve seen patterns for hats, mittens, scarves, leg warmers, sweaters, and even a wine bottle cozy.  Get a first hand account from MagCloud publisher Alexandra Tinsley.

Real Estate Materials
We’ve also had real estate brokers printing 4-page factsheets for their listed homes through MagCloud, as well as more extensive photo pamphlets for both homes and yachts.  We also included a more extensive listing catalog as one of our templates for Microsoft Publisher.

Blog-Based Publications
A number of publishers on MagCloud are bloggers who use MagCloud to publish their content in an alternate way. Sometimes these are published as collections of posts that might fit a theme, or were voted on by the community, or are simply from a period of time. In other instances, these publications contain additional information that expands upon what was originally posted on the blog, such as fresh content about a profiled individual or the backstory of an image.

These are just a sampling of the diverse publication types that we’ve seen published to the site, with more being uploaded everyday. What have you created through MagCloud? Have you been inspired to create any of the publications types listed above? Tell us in the comments below!

HP MagCloud: Create High-Quality Business Materials on a Small Business Budget

Meghan CordellaLeave a comment

This post was written by Melissa_Zieger and originally appeared on the blog for 367 Addison Avenue, HP’s online community for small and medium businesses, on September 22, 2011. You can view the original post here.

Did you know that HP has a content publishing web service that can be used to create everything from your own magazine to business materials like catalogs and portfolios? It’s called HP MagCloud – invented by HP Labs, is a self-service publishing platform that allows businesses to easily create into professional-quality publications that can be printed on demand, shipped globally, or distributed digitally.

Better yet, there’s no upfront cost and MagCloud can turn your content from a PDF to delivered printed publication in just three days!

Using MagCloud’s digital storefront, customers can order the latest issue of their favorite publication and have it printed on demand and delivered directly to their doorstep, or download for reading on their digital device of choice. Plus, all content is printed to order using HP Indigo technology, delivering professional print quality with no waste or overruns, reducing the impact on the environment.

Businesses are using MagCloud to create everything from fashion catalogs and knitting guides to photography and architectural portfolios. I recently sat down with two small business customers using HP MagCloud to find out more about how the service is benefiting their business.

Alex Tinsley started her knitting pattern design business, Dull Roar, nearly six years ago. Prior to discovering MagCloud, Tinsley was only able to provide her customers with a PDF of her patterns via her blog. Today, she uses MagCloud to transform PDF versions of her design work into high-quality professional catalogs that she can distribute in both digital and print formats without a huge impact on her business’ bottom line.

“The quality of the printing is really just beautiful, and it’s pretty much the only place you can get that kind of quality in small quantities,” said Tinsley. “I love that it runs without much input from me – I just upload the issues and collect the income. MagCloud handles all the sales, printing and shipping.”

The ability to offer customers both print and digital formats helps Tinsley meet her customer’s needs without making an upfront investment in the creation and printing. Tinsley says that most of her customers prefer the digital copy for instant gratification, but that she uses the hard copies as giveaways and gifts. She’s also used the publication as a handout at tradeshows, which enables her to drive views to her website and increase downloads of her digital catalog.

Trey Hill, a Dallas-based photographer and storyteller, started using MagCloud in 2010 to create storytelling portfolios of his work. He needed a way to not only show the pictures he had shot but also to showcase his journey.

Hill uses Adobe InDesign to create photo portfolios and uses MagCloud to print his digital creations on-demand as a way to attract new business and share with clients as a thank you for their business. Hill says the ability to have both print and digital versions is important. “The print quality increases the value of my business, but we live in a digital world so it’s still important to provide a digital format, as well,” he said. “As a small business owner, not having to buy 1,000 copies to get a great price point is worthwhile. And my customers are blown away by the quality.”

Since using MagCloud, Hill has started to see a change in what his customers have come to expect – they now see him as a storyteller, not just a photographer.

About Alex Tinsley

An avid knitter since 2004 and knit design enthusiast since 2006, Alex Tinsey’s designs can now be seen in publications like Knitty, Knit Simple, the Knit Picks Independent Designer Program, and (soon) Knit Scene. You can access Tinsley’s MagCloud products here.

About Trey Hill

Trey Hill was one of the founding creatives behind I Am Second and his portfolio includes work for Addison Road, Relevant Magazine and the Dallas Stars. He works all over the world and has had the privilege of photographing some of the planet’s most revered and most overlooked people. You can access Hill’s MagCloud products here.

Publishers in Their Own Words: Dull Roar

PattyLeave a comment

Dull Roar
by Alexandra Tinsley

Dull Roar is my little design company, providing primarily accessory patterns for handknitters. The patterns are sold mainly online, in pdf form, but many people prefer the convenience of a printed hard copy that can be carried around and marked up as you go.

It’s difficult to provide quality printed copies to people all over the world without incurring huge upfront and shipping costs on my end, but MagCloud makes it possible for me to do just that. I can now offer hard copies of both individual patterns and my multi-pattern collection right alongside the pdf versions on my blog, and let MagCloud handle the details.

The finished patterns look gorgeous and professional, and I know other designers are getting excited about the possibilities too. Knitting patterns may not be exactly what MagCloud was created for, but that doesn’t stop it from working wonderfully.