MYSTIC STAMP COMPANY

Attention to Detail, Asset Management, Print Media Mastery

Mystic's Stamp Showcase: a 48-page tabloid sent to 25-30,000 individuals bi-monthly

Collaboration with a second designer, the marketing clerk, two editors, three writers, and the marketing manager ensures this profitable bi-monthly mailing reaches customers, alongside all other projects, without fail. Additional cross-team collaboration with Buying and Inventory as well as Direct Mail manager needed for offer selection.

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Improving Existing Processes

Utilizing resources the company already had, I was able to alter the process to take about a quarter of the time previously needed. And then I taught coworkers, saving their time as well.

Mystic did not utilize any catalog plugins or a modern database, so all prices had to be entered manually, and product stock checked manually. This was naturally time consuming, so I worked with IT to create queries to pull down data into spreadsheets, dramatically speeding up the creation of offer-heavy pages and nearly automating the process of checking product quantity.

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Mystic Stamp Highlights: a 32-page booklet mailed to 25,000 people bi-monthly

Three times a year it was my responsibility to lead the production process on this little publication, ensure offer accuracy, and get it to print on time. Our target demographic was 65+ years old, so it looks like advertising out of the 60s and 70s quite intentionally; they love copy that most demographics simply don't have the time or patience for. These mailers entertain to drive sales.

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Mystic U.S. Stamp Catalog: reaching 150,000 customers annually

The Mystic U.S. Stamp Catalog was added to annually to include new issues by the USPS. In addition to keeping the catalog within page limitations and updating all prices each year, we were challenged by keeping costs low.

File Management and Asset Library

An integral part of this process was managing our internal asset library, which held hundreds of thousands of images. I was responsible for adding to and maintaining a logical file management system so that any designer could find and link to the same image.

You can view the online catalog here.

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Responsive Email Campaigns

When Mystic first began digital marketing, I stepped up to work on responsive email campaigns with a writer. Together we created campaigns alongside our normal workload until a position was filled specifically to handle email marketing.

View the sample email in your browser.

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Commemorative Foreign Stamp Souvenir Sheet

Mystic Stamp Company works with foreign nations to develop valid postage that appeals to American collectors. The stamp above was designed to coincide with the sesquicentennial of the completion of the Trans-continental Railroad.

This involved working with special paper, die cuts, and finding exceptional historically accurate imagery that people would want to add to their collections. This painting is on a gun case at a National Park, and largely unknown despite, in my opinion, being one of the finest examples of art surrounding this moment in history when east met west via the first trans-continental railroad.

Getting into the head of my intended audience and creating something they would want to see is among my favorite responsibilities as a designer. It is always an opportunity to learn.

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Mystic's Heirloom Stamp Album

Customer-favorite U.S. Postage Stamp album pages, updated yearly to include new issues. Very strict style guides ensure every page is consistent in both quality and appearance, from the first postage stamp ever issued to the latest introduced. These album pages are an example of meticulous attention to detail.

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First Day Covers and Research to Improve Their Sales

One way people collect stamps is on envelopes, cancelled on the first day of issue. These can only be made once, and must be completed by a strict deadline. Through surveys we researched what customers really look for in FDCs, and from that data I made adjustments to make our product more popular. There was a noticable increase in preorders for sets following this research.

Curating Stock Imagery

By making so many covers I have become excellent at quickly finding stock images that support and expand upon the story. Below is a simple example of how I transformed disparate stock imagery with a similar feel into a cohesive set of cache cover images to sell as a product.