Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Museum Mailer Makers Miss Mark

Every so often designers of communications pieces get carried away and produce something with a design that gets in the way of the message. The designers should know better, but management for sure should know better.
My latest example comes from the Museum of New Mexico Foundation. The Foundation works on behalf of the Museum(s) of New Mexico, one of the states great institutions. This criticism come from a friend.
Received last week, the two-piece card-stock, full color item (one wraps around the other) was folded three times. The front panel headline said, “Home Lands How Women Made the West. The photo on the front panel was of a person standing on a ladder adding adobe to a wall. One cannot tell the gender of the person. The upper right corner of the front panel was cut away, an expensive design touch. The fourth panel was perforated for easy detaching. This panel looked a little like a bookmark, but far from obviously so. Just now, while writing, I saw the tiny type saying, “Detach here for your keepsake bookmark.”
Best of all, the piece came in a clear holder. The address was printed on the mail piece, which was then inserted in the holder, which, in turn, was supposed to be closed via a strip of adhesive on the flap. The trouble was, the adhesive on my neighbor’s mailer stuck to my envelope. I got two mailers. The neighbor got none. Certainly others got two sets of this expensive mailers.
I would have to see the mailing machine to understand what happened with the technology. What I know did happen is that the designer got cute, the machine didn’t work as planned and the message suffered.

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