Bizarre ending to a mail campaign…

Actually, this is another one of those “the designer had a very cool vision in the first place” stories, or something like that. Anyway, I worked with Scott Hull (Scott Hull Associates) on this one, and it was a campaign aimed at the 10 year anniversary of 9/11 (actually a very noble campaign to help continue relief to victims). When I saw the first concept, I knew it was a way cool design,   didn’t see the final project in my mind (at least the way the designer described it)….but we hung with it.

Scott was working with one of his illustrative designers, Andy Hayes  on this particular project, and Andy had this idea of a 16 page “newspaper” looking piece (ever try to print newsprint in spot Pms colors on a sheet fed press….Not!),  plus a response card & envelope, then it was all to be sealed up in a plastic bag. Next, variable print the name/address of the recipient on a 4″ x 17″ label and then wrap it around the poly bag sealed product (by hand). There was a lot of metallic ink being used on uncoated stock. I gotta give Scott Credit, he has trust in the people he works with….and he just knows it’s going to work out well. This was a big project (we’re mailing 10,000 of these things).

When I saw the first round of proofs, I started to realize what a cool project this was going to be. Better yet, I’ll give Andy a lot of credit for the design and sticking to it. By printing the Pms 877 Silver (basic silver metallic ink) on the 50# Husky uncoated offset (which we all questioned…Metallic ink is generally printed on coated stock for optimal results…usually nobody prints metallic on uncoated), it looked just like a newspaper highlighted by the strong Pms 185 Red…Oh yea, the design was very very good, and the piece looked great.

There were some challenges throughout the process. First on the size of the “newspaper”, at first it was going to be 28 x 18, but not only did that run the cost up to high, it was rather big and cumbersome to read. Andy settled for 22 x 15, folded to 11 x 15 (that was the 16 page size), and then folded again to 7.5 x 11 for mailing. The project had to go back and forth with the post office on the size of the plastic bag we were sealing it in, but in the end, everybody just wanted something that would make it to the final recipient in as good as possible shape. Oh, I forgot that we all thought that 50# offset would have an awful lot of “show-through”, being that thin, but it didn’t. It all worked out, and once again, the piece looked great.

So the Bizarre ending to this one? This piece had good message and truly aimed to help victims of 9/11 (even 10 years later). Our target date to drop in the mail was April 15, but just all kinds of minor delays pushed it out to last Monday 5/2. That was the morning after they announced the end of Osama bin Laden. I don’t know why, but I just found that to be fairly ironic that it dropped in the mail the day after bin Laden died. These are all good people trying to help other people, I sure hope some good comes out of it, and maybe, just maybe, this will help them raise more money for their work.