The Mother’s Day Card
This concept came to mind as I was looking through the Mother’s Day cards at the grocery store, searching for something new for my fiancee’s mother. What I found was a card that broke the traditional mold of greeting cards. I’ll have to admit that the format is what did it. I don’t recall the content of the card, but I do remember the format.
Specifically, I have always seen and expected to see approximately 5” x 7” cards, give or take. Occasionally I have found huge cards (measured in feet rather than inches), but how do you mail something like this?
What I found in the grocery store was a traditionally sized card with a cute comment on the front cover and inside back cover, and then an arrow pointing to the bottom of the card along with a drawing of fingers, indicating that I should lift up the bottom of the page. The interior of the card, glued to the interior left and right pages, was a French-folded sheet that opened up into a mini poster. It got me. I had never seen anything like this. The design of the poster I had just opened grabbed my attention.
Unlike the huge greeting cards I had seen many years ago, and perhaps the three dimensional cards that contained objects (a miniature leather jacket attached to one such card), this mini poster had been one of the more original format designs. I thought it could be used for practically any holiday. It provided ample space for a powerful message. What made this original was the unexpected. Even when I lifted the flap I didn’t expect a poster twice the size of the original card.
Read more at https://www.printindustry.com/blog/2015/07/commercial-printing-format-surprises-grab-the-reader/
