Promotional Materials - Postcards

There are a few things in life that are very important to me: my  daughter, space (physical and mental), health, good coffee and good chocolate being just some.

But possibly one of the most important discoveries I've made about myself as I've grown older, is that I need to be authentic.

Bear with me if that sounds a bit odd, what I mean is that I need to be truthful to myself and to do what I think is right - which, combined with my creativity, has put me in a right old dilemma this week.  Let me tell you why:

We were tasked with making some promotional postcards. The idea is that you send the promotional postcards off to potential clients or to potential customers or agencies or employers we would like to work with.

This is a great idea, but what has become clear by talking to many professionals, is that many of these postcards, so carefully crafted, end up either in the bin, being used as a coffee mat, or, if we are among the lucky ones, filed in a drawer to be referred to never or slightly sooner.

So I decided to take a different approach - a bit of a risk, which, because of the nature of the module, my intent not fitting the requirements and being in a mixed group of Illustrators and Graphic Designers, just didn't work for me.

Before designing the postcards I thought about what might pique my interest, should young illustrators or designers send promotional material to me.  I thought it would be interesting to send a series of postcards over a number of consecutive days, which, when put together, tell a story.  I thought this would send a message that I could be consistent, reliable, see the part and yet tell the whole story.

Before we jump too much further let's look at the reasons why this now feels like it isn't right to continue.  The first two postcards were duly dispatched - the first to arrive on the designated date and the second to arrive the next working day.  However when we arrived at the lecture the postcards were already there and had been examined and 'judged', feedback given and returned to us.  The feedback gave me a jolting realisation that my handwritten but in no-special-typeface style (so that the postman could read it) was not going to cut the mustard, so to speak.  

I also realised that with the first postcard returned to me, the series would then not make sense.

I had used a narrative style designed to pique the interest of a creative, but hadn't used a show stopping design that might give that 'wow' factor.

It was also apparent that Graphic Designers and Illustrators are very different animals, my Graphic Design colleagues were loud, proud and striking, risky, risqué, bold, beautiful and showcasing a number of typefaces.  My Illustration colleagues were, on the whole, more ethereal, lurking at the back, quietly waiting to be noticed.  I thought back to the 'Great Face Race' challenge in the first module where all of us Illustrators missed the typeface trick and ended up reworking our designs to a new, more Graphic Design style.

I felt a bit odd inside.  I spoke to Leo and explained that he would receive another postcard and why, and said that I would continue to send them so that he could feed back. 'I'll have to be honest though, Helen.' he said.

Now honesty I like, but there was something in that tone that reflected something inside me and put my authenticity radar on red alert.  How could I honestly continue to send that series of cards, knowing that they are not going to meet requirements. I imagined myself growing more and more embarrassed with each card sent and the creative narrative I had planned sounding more and more inappropriate on each one.  There were six cards in the series, so this would go on for six excruciating days and poor Leo would have to endure this silly mail.

So, instead of posting them physically I will post them here - here they are. They are based on a piece of work I did around the theme of conversations:-

The Mouse character is actually a poster, the other images form the underside of the poster, folded book style and this was to be mailed on the final day.  

So, this module is all about learning and professionalism, so what did I learn?

1. Sometimes it's best to think a little more about the audience - the chances are that this tactic would have backfired on a professional organisation - especially if the first card ended up in the bin, or the Royal Mail failed to deliver.
2. A better idea would have just been to send the poster as a promotional item, along with the relevant contact details, which could have been printed on and the item folded to postcard size.
3. I actually like telling stories verbally as well as visually (the postcards were handwritten with a piece of narrative for each day), so perhaps writing and illustrating my own books is the way forward - I already have work in the pipeline along these lines and I am intend to use the Summer to further this work.

Now, what to do with the Star Wars stamps that I had bought to send them with?

H. x