Iggesund posts folding Christmas card

Iggesund Paperboard has created Christmas card in the form of a snowflake that can be folded into thousands of variations.
 
The company has a tradition of producing sophisticated Christmas cards. This latest card consists of seven die-cut snowflakes with each side printed with a different pattern. These 14 variations can then be folded to create more than 44,000 different patterns. The snowflake created by the card’s recipient then encloses a card with shades of cyan printed on metal foil and the traditional Christmas greeting on the reverse side.
 
German designer Peter Dahmen came up with the concept. He says, “Digital finishing is an exciting field and Iggesund’s Christmas card is one of the most sophisticated commissions I’ve done in this area,” says Peter Dahmen. In theory the project could be done using traditional die-cutting tools but with an edition of this size that would be much more expensive because then you have to remove the excess strips of paperboard manually.”
 
He worked with Israeli rpinter Highcon, whose design engineer Yaron Eshel supported Dahmen in the creative process. Dahmen adds, “I got the idea for the card the night before I was to fly to Israel. I was having trouble getting to sleep but when the idea came to me I had to jump out of bed and write it down before it went out of my head.”
 
During the flight the next day he refined the drawings on his iPad and showed them to Eshel on arrival. Dahmen says, “When he said it could be done using Highcon’s process, the basics fell into place.”
 
Dahmen has worked both with digital and traditional die cutting and creasing. He says digital technology makes it possible to do more fine adjustments at the last minute. He says, “After you get the cutting tool and see how it functions, you may realise your idea won’t work quite the way you’d thought, or that a few more adjustments would raise the quality of the end result. Then digital technology gives me as a designer greater freedom because usually there’s no time to wait for a mechanical adjustment to the cutting tool.”
 
Iggesund Paperboard’s project manager Anna Adler has about a dozen such cards to her credit. She says, the company’s motivation for producing sophisticated Christmas cards goes beyond the desire to send an elegant greeting to its customers.
 
She says, “We’re actively looking for new solutions and techniques, or innovative uses of traditional methods, that can inspire our customers around the world. The Christmas card is a printed sample which shows what people can achieve with our paperboards, Invercote and Incada.”