#Communications: Postal Rates Up? No Worries: Direct Mail Still Makes Sense.
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We’re firm believers that direct mail is not dead, its merely entering the final stages of a metamorphosis into the perfect solution to support:
- Social media marketing campaigns
- QR codes;
- interactive television promo campaigns; and
- Website landing-pages.
So when our friends at Ecoprint reminded us that postal rates will change on April 17 AND we needed to update our The Intelligent Mail (IMb) barcodes for new designs of reply envelopes, we took notice.
| Category Advertising, Communications, Direct Mail, Marketing, Marketing Budget, Measurement, printing, Resource | | Comments Off
Written by: Marco Kathuria
Tech: Apple Moves Into Subscription-Service Business, & Only Apple Seems Impressed
The iPad has been on the market for a year now, and we’ve had a chance to see how it is being used in the market. Certainly games and videos are doing extremely well. Unfortunately, as it turns out, early optimism about the iPad saving the publishing industry, especially publishers of magazines and periodicals, has not panned out. Instead, early booms in purchase of such publications proved to be mere bubbles of one-off purchases.
Apple’s claims to saving the periodicals industry were initially revivified over the last few days as the technology company announced opportunity for iPad users to subscribe to e-periodicals, rather than buy each edition separately. Thus far, only The Daily, published by Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp, has signed up. Will others follow?
| Category Apple, iDevice, iPad/Tablet, Marketing, Media Review, News and Current Affairs, printing, Research, Technology, Web and Print | | Comments Off
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#GraphicDesign: Fonts Faces Provide The Foundation Of Good Communication
Whenever the first homo sapien (sapien) first put his or her finger into clay or ash and marked that clay or ash to communicate an idea to another person, she or he created written language, and perhaps a font face. Over the next N millennia language groups evolved largely toward two camps: the pictographic written languages (think: Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese ideograms) and the Alpha Betic languages (think: Greek, Aramaic, Latin and all its derivatives). Earliest evidence of this latter alphabetic tradition (so called because the first two letter in ancient Greek were the characters Alpha and Beta) comes from about 1500 BC/BCE. The lettering system best known as ‘Greek’ began in fact with the Phoenicians in modern-day Israel/Palestine about 1000 BC/BCE. Not to worry: we are not going to walk through the history of the alphabet and its myriad of fonts (including Myriad). We’ve all got more pressing needs on a Monday afternoon. But we would like to point you toward an interesting series of sketches of a number of popular fonts by idsgn.org entitled “Know Your Type.”
| Category printing, Technology, Web and Print | | Comments Off
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
A Conversation with Dave Michaels of Ecoprint
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This month marked the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, and once again green is back in fashion. For some companies, like Ecoprint, green has always been in season. Based just north of Washington D.C., this printing company was founded by an environmental activist who participated in the first Earth Day and proudly proclaims its “environmental leadership since 1977.” Today Ecoprint is forging ahead on a number of fronts, demonstrating many ways for graphic arts businesses to become more sustainable environmental stewards.
MKCREATIVE has worked with many printers over the years and has always required they use soy-based inks and paper from sustainable sources on clients’ print jobs. We’ve also required that they take other longer-term measures to demonstrate their commitment to the environment. Ecoprint ‘s commitment is on another order of magnitude. We see them as kindred spirits: both Ecoprint and MKCREATIVE are run as businesses that are trying to create positive social change through sustainable practices. Both organizations are providing services to clients who make a difference in their own communities, while also offering education and guidance.
| Category Climate Change, Community, Interview, Nonprofit, printing, Sustainability | | Comments Off
Written by: Marco Kathuria