Pressing for change: brands using printed electronics for cards and games

Sara Ver-Bruggen - 07 Jul 2010

Brand owners Hallmark and Kimberly-Clark have long seen the potential of printing electronics on paper to add functionality to products. More and more companies are now waking up to the possibilities.

Forget trying to crack the Asia-centric display supply chains or making large-area, low-energy lighting. The most exciting and tangible focus of plastic electronics development is being driven by the purely practical - printing electronic functionality onto paper and board.

Printing electronics on paper is not a new trend. In 2003 Denmark's Arla Foods espoused the concept of a 'talking' milk carton where printed and low-cost electronics could produce packaging able to monitor and communicate the quality of its contents. And Cypak's 'paper computer', which won the attention of Bill Gates back in 2004, has been commercialised for some years in packaging designed to monitor medical compliance.

This year a new generation of start-ups are working more closely than ever with print users - both small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and brand owners, where printing is core to their product lines - proving how new products can be designed and printed with added functionality, cost effectively, in conjunction with cheap, conventional microelectronics.

Many of these developments are happening in the UK, where funding programmes are creating environments for brand owners and print houses, to collaborate with developers.

Print Yorkshire

Print Yorkshire is a network of print houses and print users, such as publishers and communications firms, funded by the regional agency Yorkshire Forward. The industry accounts for a £1.35 billion (€1.58 billion) contribution to the region's economy and employs some 20,000 people. Winning funding from a collective of regional development agencies, Print Yorkshire recently began working with Cambridge startup
Novalia to establish how functionality can be printed onto paper in combination with existing microelectronic logic. Three firms - Evolution Print, a litho printer, screen printer RPS 2000 and publisher and print communications company Colour Heroes - are involved in the project.

According to Print Yorkshire's Mike Hopkins: 'This is not about theoretical use of technology. We have identified three potential products for three existing market places. Formats include in-store displays. For now all I can describe one of the concepts as is life choices within a poster for the education sector,' reveals Hopkins.

Want to read more?
This article appears in full in Volume 3, issue 1 of +Plastic Electronics magazine, including Hallmark's plans for printed electronic cards and children's books and Nano ePrint's work with Tigerprint - part of Hallmark's UK business - on cards for Marks & Spencer.
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