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How Augmented Reality Let Fans of a Beloved Children’s Book Series Choose the Next Adventure

By Kyle Beckett
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Project Brief

The Sylvamo Corporation and Accent® Opaque were riding high on the success of Apollo the Spacedog and Apollo and the Mill Moose, two augmented reality children’s books that were part of a literacy program designed to help demonstrate the power of print in engaging the imagination. Sylvamo wanted to reward Apollo’s loyal audience by letting them choose what the story of the third book in the series would look like, and what kind of adventure would await Apollo and Andi. 

The challenge was devising a simple, easy-to-use way of communicating with readers and giving them the opportunity to guide where the story would go next. 

Solution

First, we created an omnichannel communication approach featuring a highly-targeted email campaign and interactive direct mail postcard with QR code technology to launch an augmented reality experience via Sylvamo’s mobile app. Once in the app, readers were able to cast their vote for one of two storylines: Apollo and Andi explore a haunted house, or Apollo and Andi build a treehouse. 

Apollo and the Treehouse once again features the talents of illustrator Kyle Beckett to tell the story of the summer Apollo and Andi devise a plan to build a treehouse without harming a tree. Beckett’s vibrant illustrations jump off the page and AR integrations help highlight the main theme of the book — a more sustainable, eco-friendly way of life. 

The pages, printed on Accent Opaque 70 lb. Text Super Smooth with ImageLok® Technology, helped Beckett’s signature illustrations pop, and the same was true with the cover, which was printed on 100 lb. Cover Super Smooth. Printed using the Canon ColorStream 8000 series web-fed inkjet press (pages) and the Canon imagePRESS C10010VP cutsheet color press (cover), the superb print quality produced outstanding color quality and crisp, clear AR markers. 

What’s more, printing on sustainably harvested Sylvamo paper provided a high-quality canvas for the story and illustrations to shine while doubling down on the project’s mission to increase the awareness of sustainability in print. 

Have you used augmented reality in print? Or, have you designed a project for inkjet that takes interactivity to a whole new level? We want to showcase it. Send us your best work and we’ll feature it in a future Dots & Pixels Project Spotlight.