Later this year, PSV Eindhoven – one of the oldest and most successful Dutch football clubs – will celebrate its 100th anniversary. Starting this week, the club is counting down the last 100 days until its 100th birthday with a daily interactive print campaign with Layar in the local newspaper Eindhovens Dagblad.

A series of articles and ads in the newspaper detail the history of the club. Fans can scan the pages with Layar to view extra videos of exciting moments from the last 100 years of PSV, interesting facts, unique stories as well as social media comments from fans on Twitter and Facebook.

“PSV is a very professional, marketing-driven organization which is always looking for new, innovative ways to communicate with their fans,” says Layar Partner Limebizz, which worked with PSV on the campaign. Incorporating Layar’s technology into this momentous campaign allows the club to interact with its fans continuously over the course the 100-day countdown in a unique way.

“Layar gives us the opportunity to share all memorable moments from 100 years of PSV,” said Guus Pennings, Head of Marketing for PSV. “Together with Limebizz and their conceptual approach, we developed an attractive Layar campaign.”

PSV isn’t the first football club to use the Layar Creator to build an interactive print campaign. Just last month, another Dutch club, ADO Den Haag, enhanced its logo and encouraged fans to scan it during a match to enter a contest and purchase special team items.

Click here to try the PSV campaign out by scanning with Layar!

Fans of thrilling fiction novels have long been anticipating its release, and now you can get a sneak peek with Layar!

Inferno, the latest book from author Dan Brown, author of the massively popular Da Vinci Code, is the latest book to use Layar’s interactive print to help promote its release. Readers in the Netherlands can get an exclusive look at this highly anticipated release by using Layar to scan an ad for the new book.

By scanning the ad in Volkskrant Magazine, fans can read, watch, listen and buy with just a few taps. Brown readers can get a sneak peek of the first chapter, watch a video trailer for the book, listen to a sample of the audio book or directly buy the book right from their phone! 

Volkskrant Magazine is distributed with de Volkskrant newspaper, which translates to “the people’s paper.” De Volkskrant is the largest newspapers in the Netherlands, read by 750,000 people each day. Already, thousands of readers have scanned the ad and interacted using Layar. Volkskrant Magazine is part of multimedia publisher de Persgroep. De Persgroep Advertising worked together with their client to produce this ad.

“We enjoy looking for creative crossmedia solutions together with clients to be able to interact with our readers”, says Olav Bongarts, director of de Persgroep Advertising. “We are quite overwhelmed by the success! More than 2,000 readers scanned the ad with Layar and created almost 5,000 interactions. It’s great that we can measure the Return on Investment so quickly and accurately.”

Interactive print has seen a lot of activity lately around books as publishers use Layar to promote new releases in exciting and engaging new ways. Just last month we shared with you how CBS Outdoor had again used Layar on advertising for popular author David Baldacci’s latest novel, boosting web traffic to Baldacci’s site by over 500%!

Click here to see the ad and try it yourself with Layar!

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!

It’s no secret that interactive print is exploding across the globe.

From real estate agencies in Australia, to big brands and publishers in Canada and the United States, to the biggest publications in France and the Netherlands, and even a boom in downloads of the Layar App in Saudi Arabia – Layar is a truly worldwide company. We’ve even taken it upon ourselves to make sure content is distributed across dozens of servers worldwide for greater speed.

As the international market for interactive print emerges, it’s time for us to take the next step in providing the best possible user experience to as many people as possible. Available today for iOS and Android, version 7.2.2 of the Layar App  includes support for the following languages:

Combined with English, these languages make up a large portion of Layar users around the globe, but this just the beginning. To provide the best experience to more users, we will add more languages based on usage and demand over time.

The inclusion of native language support within the Layar App makes it easier for publishers to create seamless and engaging experiences for their readers. Publishers could already tailor their interactive print content into the language of their choice, and now the Layar App itself follows suit to provide an immersive experience in a user’s native language. It’s simply a better all-around experience for users.

Want your language supported in the Layar App? Let us know in the comments section which one we should do next!

In the age of digital media where smartphones and tablets constantly fill our brains with rich media experiences, it is at times relaxing to escape the information overload with classic technology. Books!

And, boy, do the Dutch know how to show their appreciation for their literature. Starting with the inaugural event in 1932, the Netherlands has hosted Boekenweek, or “Book Week,” each March, with the exception of a few missed years early on. This celebration, which actually lasts 10 days, honors Dutch literature with a wide range of events, including book signings, galas and debates.

Since 1947, the festivities have been kicked off with the Boekenbal, or “Book Ball,” a highly coveted “Who’s Who” event for writers, publishers and famous Dutch people. A tradition among attendees of the Boekenbal is to steal a piece of art at the end of the night, and artists are asked to create works of art specifically for this purpose.

This year, one of the artists asked to contribute was Sander Veenhof, who you know from his augmented reality art projects like the Pentagon/White House Infiltr.AR and the Museum of Modern Art AR Exhibit. Veenhof created a virtual piece of art from the various pieces at the Stadsschouwburg, the venue for the Boekenbal. By using Layar, visitors could see the works and take a virtual piece home with them.

But the most remarkable piece of virtual art on display at the Boekenbal earlier this week was the tribute to the late Harry Mulisch, one of the most famous writers in the Netherlands. For over 50 years, Mulisch was a guest at the Boekenbal, and in recent years would take his place sitting on the staircase of the Stadsschouwburg.

Veenhof brought this memorable sight back to life with augmented reality, allowing the Boekenbal guests to relive their moments with Mulisch. One special guest, the late author’s son, provided an emotional moment as he opened Layar to see his father back in his rightful place on the stairs.