How To Make Paper Look Old and Create Direct Mail Guaranteed to Get Opened

Marketing and advertising has been increasingly over produced for many years. The mass production of media means that consumers give less time and attention to advertisements. The supply of marketing is greater than the demand given to it and the bubble is bursting on ineffective forms of communication. Total customization or the ability to create a unique experience for each and every consumer is the marketers new goal.

Today, only hand-crafted, highly-customizable printed materials consistently get noticed. The new art of printing begins with a creative idea, is achieved through a unique process and shipped with a personal touch that connects to people on a human to human level.

The creation of an aged mailer offers a perfect opportunity to create a real connection to the past and revisit a time in printing when the artisan was more powerful than the machine. An aged mailer offers you the ability to touch people's senses and send them back in time.

Just think about all the times we hear stories in the media of letters delivering decades later? People emotionally connect with the past and the dated look of an aged mailer immediately makes one think of the old and forgotten times.

As a fellow print chef, you can begin aging paper right away and rekindle the past with uniquely, hand-crafted printed materials.  To create this highly-customizable printed item right in your own kitchen, here are a few quick and easy to follow steps:

1. Print your message on the paper before beginning the process
2. Pre-heat an oven to 200 degrees
3. Soak paper in tea, coffee or vinegar and plan on your mailer still smelling like your ingredient of choice (If aging an envelope, while soaking, carefully open flat at the sealed areas as glue will now be ineffective)
4. Remove from liquid and sprinkle coffee or tea grinds on paper
5. Rub in grinds to create an assortment of random stains
6. With a dry towel or cloth, carefully pat the wet paper to remove any excess liquid and brush off remaining grinds
7. Place the paper on an oven proof pan 
8. Put pan in oven and frequently check paper every minute to test for dryness and ensure the paper does not stick to the pan
9. Remove as soon as dry and let cool (once cool, if aging an envelope, re-seal with a glue stick)

The Oven Part 2: Web Growth

In the world of web printing, the web roll is pulled through an oven to dry the ink to the paper. This is done to take advantage of in-line finishing that a web press is capable of. As the form leaves the oven, it is completely dry and ready to be folded. While this creates efficiencies and cost savings, it can also result in an unattractive phenomenon called web growth.

Have you ever seen a catalog that looks like the cover was trimmed about 1/32 short of the text? This is a result of a sheetfed-printed cover binding with web-printed text. A few days after binding the two together, the text will physically expand. What has actually happened is that the text has swelled slightly after absorbing moisture from the air. The OVEN is the culprit. When the text is pulled through the oven to dry the ink, the moisture already in the paper is literally cooked or sucked out. For a consistent product and ease of handling, the folded text signatures are then baled together tightly. They remain air tight right up until the point that the bales are cut and the signatures are bound together and trimmed. After the product is completely bound, is the first time the text is exposed to moisture in the air. Over the course of a few days, the moisture creeps back into the paper and web growth begins.

What can you do to combat this? The best remedy is to print the cover and the text on the same press, however this often isn't the most economical solution. Another solution is to trim the books post web growth, but again this adds time and costs. Perhaps the only real remedy is to accept web growth is possible and thus design your piece to eliminate how much it stands out. Placing a coordinating color on the outside bleed edge of the first text page can eliminate how noticeable it is.

The Oven - Part 1: Cooking Tips

While dishes can be used in a microwave, avoid placing dishes that have silver or gold trim (metal) in the microwave.

Before starting any meal where the oven is in use, the first step should always be pre-heating.

Convection ovens cook much faster and more evenly. Because of this, it is usually necessary to cook at a lower temperature or for less time than the recipe asks for (Most restaurants use convection ovens).

Don't open the oven door too often when cooking. Each time you do, the oven temperature decreases at least 10-20 degrees.

If you like you're meats rare, use an oven. It is much easier to control the internal temperature of the meat and not over cook than it is by using a grill or stove-top grill pan.

Set your oven at a very low temperature and use as a warmer for your plates so your warm food doesn't get cold by dinner time. This will also help guard off bacteria that will infect the food as it cools. (WARNING - Do this with caution as a plate can crack if it gets too hot. It doesn't take more than a minute or two to warm the plate.)