Deutsch PNC

10.11.29 – Once upon a time, PNC, one of the largest banks in the US, decided to calculate the cost of Christmas. And for the past 27 years now, PNC has been keeping this tradition. Based on the price of each of the gifts in the carol ”Twelve Days of Christmas ”, the PNC Christmas Price Index each year provides a fun way of measuring the inflation rate and the economy as a whole.

In November 2010, Deutsch NY came to us with the idea of presenting this year’s Christmas Index in the form of an Interactive Pop-Up book online. We LOVE pop-up books and were obviously thrilled with the idea and immediately hit the Strand store for inspiration. Have you seen this one? It’s amazing and gives us great joy around the office.

After a quite extensive phase of hand drawing sketches and 3D prototyping we ended up deciding to produce a book of three sections, each consisting of 4 of the 12 gifts. And to sum up the experience, one extra page was created with all the data presented in very analogue looking graphs. In fact, the “analogueness” of it all was probably the most challenging given that we fairly early on decided to produce the entire book in 3D.

Also, much like a physical pop up book, we felt that interaction was key. On one hand we wanted the user to be able to sit back and relax and watch the story play out whereas we also wanted the more active user to be able to have fun with the experience. Hence the dual navigation with both a play button as well as “hidden” gems throughout the experience.

But what about the US economy? Well, according to this years survey, the price tag for the 2010 PNC Christmas Price Index is $23,439 which is $1,974 more than last year. This is the second highest jump ever and largest percentage increase since 2003 when the index rose 16 percent. That comes on the heels of a modest 1.8 percent increase a year ago. Who would have thought?