Multi-Craft Litho, Inc.

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Multi-Craft E-Newsletter

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November 2006
Jazz up that “junk mail”!

You have only a few seconds to grab your reader’s interest when your promotional piece arrives—unsolicited—on your reader’s desk or in their mailbox. Your prospect will look for any reason to throw it away. How can you keep this from happening?

If you’re doing the same thing from one marketing campaign to another, or if you’re producing the same books and book covers repeatedly, you will lose your audience. If you’re not excited, they won’t be either.

Learn design by observing. Collect pieces of the design work that appeal to you and then pinpoint the qualities that make it so. Look at the design grids, the typefaces. Think about paper texture. When everything else in the mail is on gloss stock, a thick, uncoated sheet with a texture that makes you want to run your fingers back and forth across the paper can really set a piece apart from the rest.

Consider the dimensions of the pieces you like. Do they have an unusual shape or size?

For more ideas on designing a direct mail piece, go through your own mail for a week and throw out everything you don’t love (except the bills, of course). You may find one piece a week you consider attractive. Then ask yourself why.

Other sources for great ideas include printers’ samples (Multi-Craft has hundreds of printed samples in a great variety of shapes, sizes, colors, techniques, and papers), images from the Internet, printing and design magazines, and samples from paper merchants. Look at signage and displays in shopping malls. New print design trends show up early and powerfully in clothing stores frequented by teens and young professionals.

Wherever you get your ideas, when you’re looking to adapt them to your own uses, ask yourself the following questions: Is it good/unique design/production, and how did the designer achieve the desired effect?

If you’re worried that a particular effect will be costly, such as a cut-out (diecut) section of a printed piece, just ask someone here at Multi-Craft Litho! We probably have a sample showing how someone else achieved a similar effect in a slightly different way, an economical way that fits your budget. So don’t limit yourself to the same-old, same-old. Consult with your representative at Multi-Craft for practical advice when you’re ready to design something completely unique and inspiring.