WirbelWild greets at the turn of 2024/2025 in the usual individual-original manner

Every year in July, shortly before the summer vacation begins in Baden-Württemberg, we remember that we have to think about the card at the turn of the year. Far too early? On the contrary: the summer vacation with change of wallpaper and other everyday life are the best situation for us to gain away from the view of internal and external projects that have to withstand an economic assessment of our (almost) annual New Year's card game meadow. In trains and on the bike, on the water and in the mountains, in museums and on towers, we therefore searched for inspiration that leads us to our New Year's card this year. And what did we find?

Nothing.

Seriously: The first six months drupa kept us very busy. Preparation, trade fair, follow-up, all of this next to the day-to-day business. During the summer break we were just really flat.

Fortunately, it didn't stay that way, because the New Year's cards are now on their way — as late as you might expect from us by now. As always, they are not only intended to send good wishes for 2025, but also contain a large portion of WE. What has kept us busy in 2024, where is it all leading, what contribution do we want to make? As a company, as people? For our New Year's card 2025, we have therefore made the difference that each and every one of us can make and the unavoidable impact that our actions have on our environment our motto.

Our tracks make a difference

In 2024, WirbelWild was the sum of eight people — eight personalities who have made their own personal contribution with a lot of drive and creativity and together have ensured that WirbelWild has been able to reach new heights in the last 12 months: We have managed trade fairs, dedicated ourselves to new project partnerships and, last but not least, gained new perspectives as hosts or visitors to numerous seminars. We look back on this with pride. We visualise the sum of these individuals on a poster that we designed on the back of the New Year's greetings card. It shows the stacked handprints of the entire WirbelWild team — the most personal that each of us brings to the table. The handprints symbolise the individual traces we leave behind. They symbolise the difference we make.

We take this idea a step further and apply it to the 700 or so personalities who have left their personal impression on us as individuals and also on WirbelWild through their dialogue with us — whether at trade fairs, in meetings or over a casual cup of coffee. At the same time, we hope that our recipients will be inspired to translate these thoughts into their everyday lives and regularly remind themselves of the great significance their uniqueness in being and acting can have for their environment. To this end, we have come up with 12 questions and suggestions and transferred them to the poster, which can be kept in mind throughout the year. As every year, it was important to us not to create a disposable product, but to create added value with our New Year's greeting by providing users with inspiration throughout the year and encouraging them to strengthen their community and relationships.

Our strength is individual and authentic communication, in which both the sender and the recipient have a distinctive and very personal influence on the type and quantity of information as well as its presentation and appearance. What we don't want to leave unmentioned at this point: We did not use artificial intelligence to create this card either — neither in terms of technical nor artistic skills. Our ManyPrint Solutions automation software enabled us to customise the layouts and content within seconds. This also allowed us to give free rein to our creativity this time. We didn't have to weigh up weakly individualised ideas against a tedious struggle with manual layout design. Instead, we focussed our time and attention on finding ideas. True to our company motto “form follows content”, we prioritise the idea and the content, to which the form is automatically added.

Basics

Dataset contents

Every year, it is important to us to demonstrate with the New Year's card how much can be achieved in terms of individualisation and design with just a few basic details. Our software requires no more than the name, address and, if applicable, the company affiliation through which we are in contact with the recipient in order to send a unique card. Information that is required for a simple postal dispatch. Because when handling personal information, data protection has top priority.

We only personalised the form of salutation and the desired text language, as some of the greetings were sent abroad. In addition, many recipients received an individualised text section in which we reminisce about the moments shared in the past year. The text also refers to the place of residence or work and refers to the first name or surname in several places.

Using the basic data, we were able to individualise the content of the greeting card and the suggestions in the poster and also offer our software a variable for the individual colour gradient.

Technical basics

The automated workflow of our cloud-based application ManyPrint Solutions allowed us to create around 700 fully customised cards for printing in just a few minutes. The tools included in the software ensured a seamless merging of our extensive database with a hyper-personalised design.

Our application requires nothing more than cleanly readable data records and predefined design rules for the design, from which the rendering logic is programmed. In this case, we did not generate IDML documents for Adobe InDesign, as is often the case, but instead HTML documents that were rendered into a print PDF in conjunction with PrintCSS. A single customised card was printed in just 2.5 seconds.

The cards were printed by the ABT print and media GmbH in the high speed inkjet.

Layout basics

A WirbelWild greeting card should be recognisable as such at first glance: That is why we have chosen our corporate design in the type set and the basic colour. The cover pages are in a dark shade of blue — this is a tradition in our New Year's card design and ensures its recognition value. The shading in the background is based on the picture of our managing directors inside the card. Opening the dark cover reveals colourful pages with individual colour gradients.

Format and paper

Our greeting card with poster is closed in the format 105 × 210 mm and open in the format 310 × 420 mm. When fully unfolded, the reverse side forms a poster for hanging.

For printing, we chose Soporset Premium Preprint (FSC) paper with 135 g/m², whose very high whiteness means that our colour design is not compromised. It also guarantees outstanding inkjet print quality. Thanks to its natural texture, the paper feels slightly rough and therefore authentic. The cards were sent in recycled envelopes that had served their purpose as maps.

Individualization and automation

Speech

Our addressees include new and long-standing business partners and customers, valuable acquaintances, dear friends and valued employees. It goes without saying that we make distinctions in the way we address them. Our application varies not only according to formal and informal address, but also adds the address according to gender (“Mr” / “Ms”) or chooses a diverse form of address on request. Common nicknames are also used.

Name

The initial of the first name is another component on our playground of individualization. Every letter is attributed to an attribute that is supposed to stimulate self-reflection. The attribution takes place according to random. A Claudia may be charming, clever or cool — how can these positive characteristics be cultivated and how can we shine with it in everyday life?

Location

The monthly suggestions on the poster focus on the influence each and every one of us has on our environment and our fellow human beings. They are intended to motivate our recipients to take action for better coexistence — preferably locally and in their immediate surroundings. The address of the recipient plays a central role in this: on our poster, we provide impulses for discovering and positively influencing the recipient's specific place of residence or work.

Color design

On the inside of the card and on the poster side, there is an individual colour gradient from bottom left to top right. The blue colour typical of WirbelWild from our corporate design is placed at the top right of each New Year's card. The gradient towards the bottom left is very individual from person to person: based on the colours of the handprints on the poster, each of the 700 recipients was assigned their own colour from the defined colour spectrum. For example, the WirbelWild blue sometimes turns yellow, purple or orange.