Why I send something printed

Every project I finish, I send the client one printed thing in the post. A thank-you card with the new logo on it, or a printed colour swatch booklet, or a small zine of the case study. Cheap to produce. Almost no time to make. It is, by some distance, the single most-remarked-on part of any handover.

This is a short post about why.

The web project itself, however nicely it goes, is something the client has been deeply involved in for two or three months. They have seen the wireframes. They have approved the typography. They have quibbled with the tone of the buttons. By the time the site goes live there is no surprise left in the work, because they have been watching it being made.

A printed thing arriving in the post a week later is the one part of the project they did not see coming. It is also the one part of the project they can put on the desk where the rest of the team will see it. There is something about handing a junior or a partner a printed object with the new brand on it that does not happen when the same person opens a Figma link.

There is, separately, something about the discipline of getting a brand to print well at all. A wordmark that looks fine on a bright screen at 2x and looks terrible when offset-printed in CMYK on uncoated stock has, in my view, not finished being designed. The print test, however small, catches things that a thousand pixel previews do not.

The cards I use are usually run through MOO, small batches, recycled stock, no bells and whistles. The colour swatches I have made through The Print Space when budget allows. Neither is exotic. Neither costs much.

The companion pieces on print at home and ordering small batches of paper cover the practical side. For inspiration on what a properly considered printed accompaniment to a digital project can look like, Newspaper Club’s archive and MagCulture’s shop are both worth a slow afternoon.

There is also nothing especially clever about the gesture. People like getting things in the post. Designers, for some reason, have to keep talking themselves into remembering this.