After hitting the 25 million mark for Layar app downloads in September, we’re very excited to follow that up with another amazing milestone announcement.

Since its launch just a few short months ago, over 20,000 people have signed up to create interactive print with the Layar Creator!

We’ve seen great activity on the Creator, and our users love it. (Just look at some of the amazing reactions we got from our recent event in Toronto!) In fact, of our 20,000 editors, half have created multiple Creator campaigns. And Creator users come from all over the world, encompassing 84 different countries.

So who are these 20,000 Creator users? They are magazine publishers like VIVA, Labelmag, Discovery and Voetbal International who enhance their editorial content, catalog publishers like Philips myshop, Pelgrim and vtwonen that let readers shop directly from the printed page, book publishers like Lonely Planet that create more engaging experiences for readers, professional journal editors like Neurosurgery that connect their digital resources with their publication, public service officials like the Dutch Nature Reserve that enhance the visitor’s experience, product manufacturers like CHOCSTAR that make their product packaging interactive, and much more!

Publishers and creative editors of all kinds are taking advantage of the Layar Creator to enhance their products. Here’s what our CEO Quintin Schevernels has to say about the Creator’s early adoption.

“We are overwhelmed by the number of editors signing up. This not only shows us the tremendous potential for interactive print, but also the added value of an online self-service tool,” says Schevernels. “We see a lot of people signing up and taking advantage of the possibilities augmented reality has to offer for their business. We expect this number to keep growing.”

So a big THANK YOU to those who have signed up for the Creator and have begun taking part in the interactive print revolution! Not signed up yet? Get started here!

The following is an update from Layar CEO Quintin Schevernels.

My first 100 days as CEO of Layar have been very exciting!

When I started we launched our online self service tool for the print industry; the Layar Creator. This gives the opportunity to companies from all over the world to make their print products interactive within 1 minute. Now they can add the power of the internet and mobile directly to their print products. They now can give the opportunity to their users to watch or read additional content, buy products, share articles and more - all on top of their print products, giving print a new dimension. 

In less than 100 days over 15,000 Creator accounts have been created, including companies from over 100 different countries, ranging from Japan to Argentina and from Sweden to South Africa. These companies are making their newspapers, in-store promotions, magazines, business cards, packaging or annual reports interactive with the Layar Creator.

Also we launched version 7.0 of the Layar App. This version is a big improvement. We made the app as easy and simple as possible and made Interactive Print the central focus. Based on initial feedback, the 7.0 launch has been a big success. We welcomed our 25th million download on the 17th of September, reaching a major milestone. And this number is growing every day with over 35.000 new downloads from all over the world. 24/7!

Big numbers. In a market that is emerging. This is just the beginning.

Over the last 100 days, I spent a lot of time with people involved with Layar. The founders, the management team, the Layar crew and of course our launching customers (just to name a few). We also did a lot of research. Research on the market, our users and our own statistics. Based on this it became clear that interest in Interactive Print is high. Therefore, Layar is ready to accelerate with Interactive Print.

Over the coming months we will focus on building best practices. We want to help customers in the print industry translate the possibilities of Interactive Print to their business objectives. We want to create a steep learning curve. This will create valuable insights that will help create the best possible products and the market to mature.

In order to take this next step, we will make a few changes:

• We will focus our product development on Interactive Print. Over the past years we have been exploring AR. This has been a very valuable journey. A journey that gave us a lot of insights and brought us to the strong position where we are today. However we are still a small company. We see a lot of opportunities in Interactive Print and we want to focus on these. One of the consequences is that we will stop the further development of Stiktu. Also we will strengthen our development team in Amsterdam and will be recruiting for developers.
• We want to lead innovation in Interactive Print. We believe that now is the time to add interactivity to print. With over 25 million downloads of the Layar App and the early adoption of the Layar Creator, we are in a very strong position for this. However, the possibilities of Interactive Print are for a lot of companies still a big unknown. Therefore we will do additional investments in marketing, business development and customer service to create awareness for Interactive Print and help customers get started. Amongst others, we recently decided to open an office in NYC (headed by Maarten) and we are recruiting for a V.P. of Marketing. Over the next months we will also be reinforcing our partner network.
• Last but not least, a maturing market and a changing strategy mean changing roles. Two of our founders and shareholders, Raimo and Claire, will soon have new roles. Together with co-founder Maarten, they brought Layar to where it is today and deserve tremendous respect for this. Now that they have brought the management in for the next phase, both Raimo and Claire feel comfortable to change their involvement. This means that from the 1st of January next year both Claire and Raimo will no longer be involved with Layar on a day-to-day basis. Raimo will of course continue to be a member of our Supervisory Board and keep on acting as sparring partner for our product strategy. Claire will stay involved as advisor to continue to represent our company around the world and show all the opportunities that AR and Layar have to offer.

My first 100 days at Layar have been very exciting. I have the strong feeling there is much more exciting times to come. We will keep you up to date!

Here at Layar we are invested in helping publishers create the best experience for their readers in the Layar Creator. Since the augmented reality field is relatively new to most, we’ve created a comprehensive best practices guide for creating engaging, high quality Layar Creator campaigns.

The following set of best practices encompasses the results of user tests, as well as statistics studies on a few Layar Creator campaigns. They are part of an ongoing learning process about user experience in the augmented reality field, with a focus on printed publications. You will find both general and specific recommendations, example images and useful links for more information.

Click here to download Layar’s Best Practices Guide for Layar Creator.

The guide includes:

• Insights on instructions pages (purpose, positioning, design and communication style, etc.).
• Calls to action in print (purpose, positioning, design, copy, the Layar logo, etc.).
• Suggestions regarding digital content (target market, content type, principle, etc.).

We will continue to update this document and warmly welcome your feedback. We are aware that some methods work better for some publications more than others, that is why we kindly ask you to share your experience with us. We would love to hear back from you!

To leave us feedback, contact Georgia Diaconescu at georgia@layar.com.

We recently released an update to the Layar Creator that makes it even easier to customize your Interactive Print. Now, the normal blue buttons can be whatever color you want them to be, allowing you to coordinate the color pallet of both your print materials and the interactive buttons you place on top of them.

You can use any of our pre-selected default colors, pick from the color wheel or enter in a hex color code to really choose the perfect color.

To see how you can use you own custom colors in the Layar Creator, check out this really quick tutorial video. 

Here at Layar we’re constantly working toward making our products better and better, especially when we hear similar feature requests from the community. That’s exactly why we’ve got some great new features in the Creator to share today.

Based on popular feedback from users, we’ve added some new default buttons to the Creator and we’ve made it easier than ever to customize them. Here are the new features you’ll find in the Creator as of today:

“Like us on Facebook” button - Easily link up your print publication with your Facebook presence. Now readers can quickly “Like” your brand, products or anything else on Facebook.
“Follow us on Twitter” button - Encourage readers to get social and interact with you online. Just enter your brand’s Twitter username to enable fast following.
“Email us” button - One of the most frequently requested improvements from you, the Creator community. Now you can get instant feedback and messages from readers.
Custom colors! - Break free of the standard blue buttons. Mix things up and use any RGB color or one of our 10 presets.

These new buttons and options make using the Creator to engage with your audience much easier. Use the Facebook and Twitter buttons to link your print to your online social media pages and let readers easily get in touch with the Email button. With the color picker, you can customize your buttons to match your brand’s style, making readers feel right at home.