Environmentally-friendly designing and marketing during a recession

April 3, 2008 – 6:03 pm

Environmentally-friendly and eco-friendly design

I’ve noticed a trend emerge recently. A client of mine got me to design an invitation to a marketing event – cocktails at a new store – I sent him a beautifully designed invite in the form or a PDF and asked him how many he needed printed and he said: “Oh, there’s no need, I’m sending the PDF by email”.

More and more of this will be happening in the future. If this widely-predicted recession actually takes hold, marketing managers can tighten there budgets by sacrificing digital print for digital communication.

It’s another benefit of the interactive PDF. Why go to the expense of printing something when you can email a PDF? They look good, the file size is low enough not to bother the receiver and, let’s face it, it’s more likely to be seen than if it was sent in the post.

There are various other ways of side-stepping a printer. There’s html emails, although care should be taken that they’re not seen as spam. And there’s one-off web pages – if you’re very worried about spam filters simply put a link in your email. A new domain can be set up in seconds for next to nothing. Simply create a site at www dot something-interesting-that-hasn’t-been-thought-of-yet dot com and design an eye-catching splash page. Use web stats and forms to see if visitors have landed.

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  1. 8 Responses to “Environmentally-friendly designing and marketing during a recession”

  2. I guess this is another sign that businesses are moving digital. There is still hope for the paperless office.

    By Dallas Web Design on Apr 3, 2008

  3. Maybe one day! Not a paperless world, though!

    By Rob Cubbon on Apr 4, 2008

  4. im just curious to know, how the retail business can survive if all things going digital…

    do they have to move to digital too ?

    By Axa on Apr 6, 2008

  5. It’s a good question, Axa. I know that the high street retail business is having hard times here is the UK, being hit by both the online shopping and a downturn in consumer confidence. But obviously this isn’t the end of print design as we know it. Although increasingly I’m noticing plasma screens are replacing poster advertising and point-of-sale.

    By Rob Cubbon on Apr 6, 2008

  6. good post, and clever too….interesting that the client said he was only going to send the pdf rather than get them printed and mail them out

    I am personally against mass postcard mailings as the amount of wated paper in the mail these days is pretty upsetting!

    I wonder though if we will ever get rid of paper, as it is somehting you can leave behind that is physical…you can hold it , etc…like a business card….will paper materials like this always be in business???

    I guess we will see…..it’s lookin good for those of us that can design and implement both types of media tho!! :)

    By Brian Yerkes on Apr 8, 2008

  7. Thinking of ways to save money whilst having the same marketing clout is something I’ll be coming back to.

    I agree with you about mass mailings being a waste of paper but that paper will never really go away.

    For example, I have a standard sized business card and I think it’s perfect, it fits in a wallet and people usually keep them. In fact the last time I swapped cards with an associate he said, “some things never change”!

    Yes, I’m glad I’m not specialising in short run promotional print materials or something that finds the going tough at the moment.

    But I’m sure they’ll be new opportunities as the credit crunch bites!

    Thanks for the comment.

    By Rob Cubbon on Apr 9, 2008

  8. really nice. i got a website with tutorials too . but just about everything. maybe you will be interested in.

    By Aza on Apr 28, 2008

  9. Thank you, Aza, your website is very interesting.

    By Rob Cubbon on Apr 30, 2008

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