Anatomy of a Control: Sierra Club Packs It In

The busy, little gray monarch-sized envelope, at first glance, appears to be personally addressed to me from Carl Pope. The font in the computer-generated name and address label matches Pope’s name in the cornercard. In the upper right is a faux-metered nonprofit indicia in red. But this is offset by the bright, four-color stamps in the center that give the feeling of something that was hand-applied.

Hooked on a feeling
Examine ten direct mail packages, and from nine of them you’ll get the feeling that it’s coming from a machine instead of a live human being. Sure, there’s a letter from a person, but the signature is printed. The reader’s name is either a label or computer personalized. It appears as if the only human that ever touched it was the postman. The envelope is full of “printed” things — not things touched by real people. Everything looks too neat, too perfect.