Maker Camp: It’s Field Trip Friday

Today on Maker Camp at 11am PST on Google+ we hit the road for a virtual field trip. This time we’re headed to the headquarters of Hallmark Cards in Kansas City, Missouri. Hallmark is a $4 billion business with greeting cards and other products sold in 39,000 retail stores across the U.S. and in 100 countries worldwide.

What’s a greeting card company have to do with making? Plenty.

In Hallmark’s large industrial crafts center, industrial designers work on CNC machines. Their enormous creative center has everything from ceramics to paper-mâché to stone carving to machines that can print on anything to experimental run printers. Hallmark also make the tools for their machines in their huge metal shop, and in a smaller craft area open to all, the Leap Lab, Hallmark hackers can use a laser etcher, vacuum-forming machine, and much more. In Hallmark’s LEaP Lab, a space dedicated to “Learning, Exploring and Prototyping for Tomorrow’s Hallmark,” employees get to use the latest hardware, software, and technology for new product development.

During today’s camp, we’ll meet a host of Hallmark employees/makers engaged in all aspects of creative design.

Tune in right here. Be sure to stop by the Maker Camp community page on Google+ and check out the projects your fellow makers and making and post a project of your own.