Let’s put these event gifts down on paper

Paper Carpenter is a cardboard design agency that uses cardboard materials to create exhibition booth designs, furniture, corporate gift packaging, and a host of other creations. Their cardboard artists come with Cardboard Carpentry skills, and have helped the MICE sector to reduce waste with their alternative solutions.

The company’s journey began in 2013 as an event fabrication company. Marketing director, Irene Ng, said: “Then, we used a lot of wood carpentry and had always seen it being discarded as waste after a short usage of 2 to 3 days. The thought of such continued waste propelled us to find alternative solutions, and that began our quest to change the usage of materials, when we embarked on cardboard designing. It has proven to be a wonderful substitute for wood.”

Creating the wow factor

Their booths often produce the “wow” factor leading to good conversation starters among clients’ target market, said Ng. Its core product, PaperConnect System, has the strength of wood carpentry and is 99% recyclable like cardboard. Said Ng: “This system allows us to be very creative and versatile in our design and yet be very competitive in our pricing. Overall, who doesn’t want a head-turning design at a fraction of the cost!”

New clients are typically conscious that their decisions could impact the environment and Paper Carpenter provides them with start-to-end solutions - from designing the exhibition booth, fabrication using PaperConnect System, dismantling, to recycling at the end.

The company has also branched out into corporate gift packaging and designing cardboard play items for children. Customised packing is also one of its expertise where it can create PR boxes for a product launch.

Clearing wrong ideas

Sometimes, potential clients think that their cardboard is similar to online packaging box material. Said Ng: “Although it looks the same, it is not. We specify the cardboard grammage of our boards, and the thickness we require of the boards to match the design specification of our design. In total, we have 12 different grades of cardboards for our varied design needs.

“To give our design the stability like a wood carpentry booth, we use PaperConnect System which is made from highly compressed cardboard. It acts as an inner structure when we design the cardboard booth design, giving us stability and flexibility to design any structure possible with cardboard.”

Drawing the crowds

One of the biggest structures Paper Carpenter has created was an exhibition at Changi Airport where replicas of Central and Eastern Europe’s famous landmarks during the 2018 World Cup were produced. The exhibits were made entirely from cardboard with a height of 8 m, spanning a length of 20 m and were designed to attract more visitors to the airport for the live screening of the World Cup.