Incredible thermal colour-changing business report

Croatian tobacco and tourism company Adris Group wanted to show that its company was "in good hands" for its annual report. This inspired south-eastern Europe advertising agency Bruketa&Žinic OM to take a novel approach to its design, involving thermal colour-changing materials for the cover and certain internal illustrations.

"The company, Adris Group, is literally in the hands of its employees, from the cleaning ladies to the management board," explains creative director Davor Bruketa explains. "And this is why we named this annual report In Good Hands. We think things become better when they are in good hands – like the cover of this book."

Thermochromic colours are extremely demanding to apply because of the colour coverage, so for them to react the way we want, specific microclimate conditions have to be achieved during the printing," Bruketa explains. "We printed the covers twice because we weren’t really satisfied with the colour coverage and the look of the image after the heating process."

The agency was already experienced with thermo-colours. "We'd been developing the colour for an ‘invisible cookbook’ – which needs to be baked before you can read it – for four years with different laboratories.

"This time, things were much simpler. There are several manufacturers on the market today that develop new products all the time. Thermo-reactive colour is nothing special by itself – you can find it on beer bottles, for example – but what really makes a difference is having a clear communication goal, and a good creative idea."

• This interview was originally published in Computer Arts issue 208.

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