By J. Dean Spence
Yesterday was the last class of a website design course I took in the west end of Toronto. As part of my weekly ritual during the course, I spent my lunches nearby at a superb fast food joint called South St. Burger.
The South St. Burger website describes its burgers as fresh, 100 percent Angus beef without fillers, without additives or preservatives, and without antibiotics or added hormones. I always had my burger cooked well done. The outer part of the hamburger patty was by no means ever overdone or crunchy, but always had a pleasant hint of bite, and was juicy inside. Overall their burgers are well-seasoned, flavourful, and topped with fresh garnishes. South St. Burger simply makes one of the best burgers I have ever eaten. And the fries are sublime too!
Because yesterday was probably the last time I would visit South St. Burger for a while, I asked for a brochure so that I would remember the place. The cashier, however, told me they don’t have brochures.
I immediately thought that this was a missed opportunity on their part. They could have had a small piece of their company in my apartment—a small piece of South St. Burger that I would have treasured until my next visit.
In “Successful Branding with Brochures” Thomas Penberthy suggests that brochures tell a story to attract new business and/or strengthen relationships with existing customers. Brochures help promote turning potential and existing customers into brand advocates. A nice feature of brochures is that businesses can put their contact information (phone number, URL, email address, and address) at the bottom of them. They are, in short, an effective way to create long-term relationships with customers.
Penberthy writes, “The marketing brochure is an ideal vehicle for transporting a lot of information in an efficient and appropriately sized package. A brochure is more than an advertisement: it conveys some depth, context and character.”
Leaving South St. Burger yesterday, I began to wonder why a business like this would not make brochures. Well…it would be cheaper, in the long run, to just have a website.
It would also be more environmentally friendly.
In a 2012 paper published in The International Journal of the Arts, Lisa M. Graham suggests that green design is—or at least should be—at the forefront of the consciousness of graphic designers. Graham argues that ephemera, such as newspapers, magazines, annual reports, newsletters and brochures, not only are discarded after they are used, but they are intended to be discarded. After careful design, ephemera are hastily thrown away, ending up in landfills where they do not just lay inert. As they degrade, Graham explains, they can release “toxins as inks, plastics, adhesives and paper substrates decompose. These toxins have the potential to contaminate soil and leach into water sources.”
Green design, however, goes further than using recycled paper, as well as avoiding toxic ink and adhesives. Graham suggests that a new mindset is needed. Typically, graphic design aims to help communicate a message such as promoting a product or service—a message aligned with a business’s overall brand image. Unfortunately, Graham points out that new messages, and the ephemera they are printed on, are created even when old ones are still good.
And for graphic designers it is all about outdoing the competition: “Graphic designers have, in the desire to maintain marketability in a highly competitive industry, largely bought into the driving need to create work that is a ‘newer’ or ‘fresher’ style than the next design studio.”
And if you think that in our increasingly digital world that the amount of ephemera destined for the landfill are on the decline, guess again. According to Graham, “there has been a marked growth in the amount of discarded graphic designs that enters the solid waste stream in the last 20 years.”
If some restaurants like South St. Burgers are foregoing with ephemera because of environmental concerns, perhaps they can find creative ways to make ephemera more “sticky” to the hands of their customers. How about a campaign that allows customers to collect points with ephemera? How about ephemera with useful information on them, like recipes? All it takes is a little creativity, and the rewards for the businesses would be all of those hinted above.
I want to explore this issue more. I will visit more of my favourite fast food restaurants over the next few months to see if they are publishing ephemera—and if they are doing so in a sustainable way—or if they are solely using digital channels to communicate with their customers. Why are they publishing ephemera? Why aren’t they publishing ephemera?
Stay tuned.