Everyone has at least a few photos on their smartphone that they've thought about turning into prints. Think of how much more likely you'd turn those pixels into prints if you could sign up for a service that did it for you... for free. You may soon have the opportunity to sign up for as many as 20 free prints a month once a Kickstarter dubbed Flag gets up and running.
For the "what's the catch" question that inevitable arises when services such as this are touted, the answer comes in the form of small advertisements that will be placed on the backs of the free prints.
Of course, founder Samuel Agboola was aware of the proverbial "chicken and egg" problem this idea faced as in order to get advertisers he first needed users - but to get the free prints to users he needed advertisers. Thus enter Kickstarter, as Agboola's goal was to build up an audience that's engaged enough to pay for the product before it launches.
We are told the 20 monthly freebies would be printed on "museum quality" 220 gsm paper. For those that may want bigger prints than the standard 4x6, you can also order a 16 photo "enlargement" jigsaw puzzle. The Flag service also plans to allow square or 16:9 prints for no extra fee, as well as the options of adding laser cut edges and postcard orders for what we are told would be a slight extra fee.
The app is designed to work with both smartphones and tablets and, as Agboola is quick to explain, the idea is about more than just delivering free prints.
"Free photo printing is the hook," explains Agboola. "Our intention is to offer all the photo printing services you can get from any of the companies that exist today, we just intend to do it at a higher quality."
And by higher quality Agboola apparently isn't kidding around as Flag plans on offering those aforementioned "museum quality" prints of Giclée fine art quality.
The project was successfully funded last month raising close to $170,000 on Kickstarter and Agboola is currently in negotiations with printing partners now and hopes to launch the service shortly. Stay tuned for your free prints.
