romoting a groundbreaking special such as the special such as the Discovery Channel’s When

Dinosaurs Roamed America was a task, like its pre-historic cast of characters, of epic proportions. But through ingenuity, communication, and the art of multi-level engraving, a press kit folder was created of a deeply debossed footprint or ‘track’ of a Theropod dinosaur. Targeting an audience of television critics, television writers and scientifi c writers, the goal of the press kit was to get press coverage prior to the show airing in magazines such at TV Guide, Entertainment Weekly, and Discover.

According to Art Director Linas Virbickas with Discovery Communications, the creative arm for the Discovery Channel, writers for these publications get an unbelievable amount of press kits and therefore, competition for press coverage is fi erce, to say the least. Not only do the designs need to be attention grabbing but additionally, they need to be refl ective of the show’s quality and the network’s integrity.

In addition, Virbickas explained that the people who receive the press kit will either look at it and then throw it away or they will fi le

it for use as a quick reference in the future. Therefore, the folder the future. Therefore, the folder needs to be functional as well as eye-catching.

To accomplish their goals, Discovery’s creative team focused on a design that would depict both realism and a great sense of weight. To accomplish this, the process of multi-level embossing and debossing was utilized to re-create the layered depth of the footprint and the many crevices of the fossilized rock formation in which the footprint was embedded. These processes were combined with 4-color lithography, which helped to create all the minute nuances and crevices in the

Making a Lasting Impression

Dinosaurs Roamed America

rocks, not to mention shading in just the right places to give in just the right places to give the impression of even greater depth.

The press kit folder was extremely successful in gaining the type of press coverage that Discovery Communications sought – coverage that was crucial in promoting the ‘ground-breaking’ special, which utilized extraordinary computer animation combined with the most current scientifi c evidence to re-create dinosaur sights and sounds indigenous to prehistoric North America. And what better way to capture the realism and authenticity of the show than through a deeply debossed dinosaur footprint – an ever-lasting ‘impression’ in time that truly left its mark!