Queen’s Day, a huge public holiday this Tuesday in the Netherlands, has a rich history with Layar. Just last year, the local newspaper where the Queen herself was to visit enhanced its pages with extra content about the royal visit using Layar. It even provided a link to a livestream of the day’s events for supported devices.

This year, it’s not just Queen’s Day – it’s also the coronation of the new King (yes, next year it will be King’s Day) and with this evolution comes more evolution of augmented reality and interactive print with Layar.

A new Dutch augmented reality agency AugmentNL has come up with a unique way to use some of the most prominent space in Amsterdam as interactive print. The tall and wide Overhoeksgebouw has long been a popular Amsterdam ad space and is currently draped in a decoration for Queen’s Day. Scanning this side of building liberates this space to the people of Amsterdam, letting them post messages and drawings for all to see.

For those in Amsterdam this week, by scanning the side of the Overhoeksgebouw you can view the latest tweet featuring the hashtag #FelicitatieXXL and add your own drawn graffiti to the side. This teaser project from AugmentNL shows the wide audience a simple interactive print ad campaign can have when placed in a prominent location.

Using the dynamic widgets available with Layar’s technology, AugmentNL can provide a live feed of tweets along with an interactive canvas for drawing right on the side of the building. It’s certainly a unique idea, but with Layar it’s simple and easy to implement very quickly.

So if you’re in town for Queen’s Day, scan the Overhoeksgebouw by the IJ river and see how interactive print isn’t just for magazines – it’s great for providing interactivity on large outdoor advertising as well!

The Dutch magazine Print Power has created a truly magical cover for its latest issue with Layar’s interactive print. Scanning the cover with Layar brings the static cover to life with a truly awesome video of a magician doing several great close-up card tricks in less than 60 seconds. It’s really something to see!

When we talk about adding the “Wow” factor to your print, this is what we mean! This is a very effective implementation of Layar’s interactive print technology. The call-to-action in the upper right instructs the reader to watch as the magician on the cover comes alive.

Click here to try it for yourself!

This is right up there among the best covers we’ve seen in interactive print, along with the robots on this Reader’s Digest cover and our own LAYARED Magazine with co-founder Raimo. There are lots of other great examples out there, but Print Power has really set the standard for augmented magazine covers!

It’s been a few months since we first published our Best Practices Guide for the Layar Creator, and a lot has changed since then! So here we are with a completely refreshed and updated guide filled with loads of new insights from successful interactive print campaigns.

In our new guide, titled Steps to Effective Campaign Creation, you can find lots of great tips to make your next interactive print campaign your best one yet. In the guide you’ll find:

• Getting started with interactive print
• Best practices for the Layar Creator
• Concepting your campaign
• “Dos and Don’ts” for instruction pages, calls-to-action and more
• Testing your campaign
• Integrating interactive print into your workflow
• And more!

We’ve worked very hard to create a friendly guide that should help improve your interactive print campaigns, but let us know if you think anything’s missing or if you have any questions. Just mail georgia@layar.com to get in touch.

Click here to download the all new Best Practices Guide.

Not long ago on the blog we featured HTML Week and the all new HTML-infused LAYARED Magazine. Now we’ve got a great HTML Widget tutorial that shows some of the capabilities of the HTML Widget.

One way to offer readers more content in a single space is to create an HTML Widget with expandable and collapsible content areas. It’s great for adding an FAQ, images or extra product information to your printed pages in a way that’s friendly to users and easy to build.

Follow this link to check out the tutorial and download our example template to build your own!

It’s been just a few days short of two weeks since we started counting down the downloads remaining until we hit 30 million! Today we stand just under 200,000 downloads away and we’re fast approaching the goal.

Be sure to follow our progress as we approach 30 million and share interesting facts and stories “behind the numbers” on Twitter with the hashtag #Layar30M. We’ve already posted a bunch, check out the rundown of what we’ve heard so far down below!

And make sure to keep an eye over at Layar.com/30M to read up on everything we post.

4.4 billion operations!

We do a lot of sending and receiving of data, and lots of requests are made to our back-end database. Just last month, our database process 4.4 BILLION input/output operations. That’s a lot of activity!

Layar tattoos!

One enterprising individual as gone as far as to turn a tattoo into interactive “print” (skin?). This goes to show that Layar isn’t just for magazines, but can be on many flat surfaces, including product packaging! 

It’s more than just print!

People are enhancing more than magazines and business cards. Real estate agency Van Santvoort enhanced the walls of their kiosk with help from Layar partner Limebizz. Check it out on the blog.

Elanders is our partner!

We’ve partnered with Elanders UK, part of a global printing firm with production across 4 continents. Their customers include global brands like Jaguar Land Rover, Tesco and Bosch. Read more on the blog.

LOTS of coffee!

According to the computer living inside of our office coffee machine, we consumed over 12,000 cups of coffee last year! We work hard at making the best interactive print solutions out there.

Read more »

Founded in 1905, ADO Den Haag is one of the leading football teams in the Dutch national league. Together with marketing and communications multimedia agency UWMERK!WAARDIG, ADO Den Haag will be the first football club ever to use Layar technology during a football match. The kick-off will be take place this evening during the ADO Den Haag – FC Twente match. The club and agency have made the strategic choice to combine football, passion and content in a large campaign for their fans.

During the match, fans will be able to scan the club logo with the Layar App. While using the app, the fans will receive a message of team captain Danny Holla who invites them to participate in an exclusive contest. In addition the fans will be able to purchase a unique merchandise package and they can “Like” their favorite club on Facebook.

We caught up with Jasper Saeijs, Marketing Coordinator for ADO Den Haag and André Batenburg, Managing Director for UWMERK!WAARDIG to hear more about this campaign.

Why did you decide to include interactive print in the multimedia of ADO Den Haag?
J.S.: ADO Den Haag wants to get to the next level of interaction between the club, the players and the fans. Interactive print provides a unique opportunity for us to bring our club and our players closer to our fans. With Layar we can use the emotional value of a football club and provide a more unique experience around our matches.
A.B.: More and more people want to have a live experience on their mobile devices. Layar provides the unique opportunity to combine multimedia techniques and interactivity (dialogue) at the same moment. Layar is easy to use and enhances the live experience during the football match.

What do you want to achieve?
J.S.: Besides bringing the club and the players closer to our fans, we can also make a quick link to our marketing activities around our products. Interactive print helps in making your marketing strategy less aggressive.
A.B.: As a multimedia agency we want to help ADO Den Haag intensify the contact with their fans. Next to that, we engage with the fans via film, contest, social share and e-commerce.

Why did you choose Layar?
J.S.: UWMERK!WAARDIG introduced us to Layar and we were impressed by the technology.
A.B.: Layar has broad experience in augmented reality and as a Certified Layar Partner, UWMERK!WAARDIG is developing ideas for today and the near future. We can level on strategic issues and work side-by-side in the field of operations.

Plans for the future?
J.S.: For now we like to test with augmented reality and see if we can achieve better communications and interaction with our fans. Augmented reality is one of the concepts that I think will be the future of marketing communication.
A.B.: We will integrate Layar for several business cases of our clients. That goes for retail and other companies. At this moment we are creating a variety of business cases using Layar that will go live in the upcoming weeks and months. I believe that interactive print will grow rapidly and we are happy that we are experienced in this field.

Give it a try yourself by scanning the ADO Den Haag logo in the flyers below! (Click to enlarge.)