Surprise with Personal Touch by @JennG_

After attending PlannerTech last month, I was impressed by the customization and accessibility of event technology that offers planners easy, mostly free tools to plan events from start to finish online. At Collinson Media’s upcoming Regional Leadership Summit, we have a session on going paperless from planning to execution.

You could set up a custom website, online registration, email blasts, social media and an event app and never risk a paper cut. But will you be heard above the online uproar? Attendees are overtaken by tweets, evites, news feed updates and videos announcing the latest and greatest conferences and events in their industry.

If a custom, letterpress invitation arrived on their desks, would it catch their attention?

At last week’s Creative Mornings, a monthly lecture series with chapters across the country, the owners of printing and finishing shop Henry & Co. described the place handmade and craftsmanship have in today’s society.

“Something’s missing,” Jason Henry said during his presentation. “Everything’s disposable now…but there’s a more educated consumer who wants things that are built better, that have better design.”

Every attendee to the lecture received a letter-pressed poster with the branding of the day’s event. The video below shows how much time—not including design and plate creation—went into crafting it.

I look for reasons to delete emails without opening them. I scan tweets while in the grocery store line and I throw away postcard after postcard. That poster, however, is hanging on my cubicle wall, and I’ll be at the next Creative Mornings meeting.