Art, Kids & Printing Profits

A unique fine art printing job has put Squirt Printing’s work in one of the most popular stores in the nation for the holiday season.

Through a partnership between Pottery Barn Kids and Kidlandia, an online destination where parents and kids create fantasy maps that trace the family’s story to create personalized wall art for children’s rooms, Squirt Printing’s expertise came into play to produce the wall art. Two different maps are being offered through the Pottery Barn Kids Web site as part of its Fall collection of children’s furnishings and décor.

Up to 25 cities, islands and other features on the artistic maps can be personalized with the names of family members, friends and places meaningful to the family. When ordered on the site, this variable data is then routed to Squirt Printing, where the personalized, 35x27-inch maps are printed using HP Designjet printers.

Andy Wood, CEO of Squirt Printing LLC, said, “We grab the link on the Web site when it becomes a finished file and then we print in bulk all the orders we have for the day. Because the HP printers are tough we leave them running and walk away.”

Squirt Printing was founded in 2005 by Wood and Michael Edwards. Wood spent five years with The Thomas Kinkade Co. as director of manufacturing engineering. Because his background is in fine art printing he knows how to get quality work from his equipment.

With four employees in his Sunnyvale, Calif. office he runs two shifts and gets a three-day turnaround on the fine art materials. “We add a water-based varnish to the maps and dowels on the top and bottom, roll them in a tube and ship them out,” he explained.

The colorful pirate maps are personalized by Brian Backus, the founder and owner of Kidlandia, San Francisco. His extraordinary talent as an artist made the fantasy maps come to life. He also spent a year and a half working with a talented engineer to design and write the personalized software for the maps (patent pending). Backus has a body of art (120 glicees) and plans to market his art to major retailers nationwide.

“I personalize the maps depending on what the client wants, in this case Pottery Barn wanted pirates for its rooms,” noted Backus. Although pirates might be a favorite of Pottery Barn customers, Backus also supplies other creations on his site, such as SpongeBob’s Bikini Bottom and Dora the Explorer’s world. All of these pieces can be personalized for a child with his/her family’s names.

Kidlandia (www.kidlandia.com) is anticipating a significant bump in business, both for itself and Squirt, as families snap these up as gifts and presents for the holidays.

According to Backus, he has been living in a fantasy world of maps and monsters since he was a very little boy. “I was inspired by the creations of Dr. Seuss. He lived next to my great aunt Betty in La Jolla where I grew up, and would sometimes come to Sunday tea. We would spy on his fun house in the woods.”

Kidlandia grew out of his 2004 concept to create personalized maps of imaginary kingdoms for children’s rooms. He believed that by providing children their own kingdoms, with friendly monsters as companions, kids would gain an increased sense of confidence, control and self-worth. In addition, by naming the cities, islands, and other features of the kingdoms after family and friends, kids would feel more connected to those who love them.

Backus, who produced educational multimedia titles for Disney and Voyager, was also intrigued by the idea that by engaging kids in namesake kingdoms, he could motivate them to understand maps, and acceleate reading skills.

Although the maps cost up to $2,000 and were only sold by word of mouth, Backus could not keep up with demand. He received consistent feedback that the maps were among the favorite gifts of a lifetime. In response to this encouragement, he determined to make the maps more widely available, and at affordable prices. Kidlandia was born.