Rule29 Helps Neenah Paper Keep on Ticking

The newest promotion from Neenah Paper is hot off the presses, and it’s designed to inspire creativity. Put down that Wacom pen and pick up an X-Acto: the “Striking Every Time” piece for Oxford and Esse premium papers is more than just an engaging visual and tactile experience for recipients. It asks you to interact, and includes several clock faces that you can assemble and actually use – the kit includes a working clock motor.

Conceptualized by Neenah and articulated by Design Guys in Minneapolis, the kit features eight unique designs that are sure to appeal to a wide collection of designers. Says Steve Sikora of Design Guys, “Credit goes to three designers here: Beth Ketter, principal designer, Jai Theige and Joe Anderson. They created the eight paper clock faces included here. We had a riot dreaming them up.  As an aside, we collect a lot of clocks; have for years. We’ve amassed a nice collection of mid-century modern clocks, some by notable companies like Howard Miller, others pure kitsch. We have one room that holds most of our workstations that is ringed with giant clocks. For 14 years they have served as a reminder of the value of a client’s time — and thus a designer’s time.”

For those that are a little more adventurous we encourage you join in the fun and create your own clock face designs. Just click back to the main blog page and scroll to the bottom to see the “It’s Contest Time” ad.  Click on “Get Started” visit to request some free (can’t go wrong with that) samples of Oxford and Esse papers to build the clock of your dreams! Have a go at playing the role of clockmaker and submit it into the contest.

We had the privilege of working with Neenah to create the online portion of this exciting promotion. The goal was to interact with the design community that is already involved in Against the Grain, on the blog and through Twitter. By creating an extension of the blog, the interaction and overall feel are unified and familiar to those exploring the entries.

By visiting neenahpaper.com/clockcontest, users can take a photo of the time-telling work of art they created and enter it into a contest to potentially be used in Neenah’s next iPhone and iPad app. On the site, visitors will find all of the current entries and be able to vote on their favorites. Find a gem? Want to promote your own? Facebook and Twitter “share” links allow you to post the creations in the wide world of social media and gain those important votes.

Check out neenahpaper.com/clockcontest to see what all the hub-ub is about. We’re excited to see what ingenious clock designs the great community here comes up with. So get going – time’s tickin’.

(I successfully wrote an entire post about clocks without one reference to Ke$sha’s Tik-Tok. Oh, wait…)