How to design a “touching” thank you card…

Question: First of all, what is the need to design a “touching” thank you card?

Answer: You will discover the answer as you read along…

At Foresight Plus, we have enjoyed working on really cool projects. This time, the project (pro bono project) was to create a Thank You card for one of my favorite charities Sankara Eye Foundation (SEF) for their annual outreach to more than 40,000 kind and generous donors.

The goal was simple – you need to create a card that stands out. There are dozens of cards during this season (Thanksgiving) an also ran card will just disappear into the background.

At Foresight Plus, we came up with our own new criteria:
a) The card has to tell a powerful story
b) The card has to bring an emotional appeal
c) The card should connect both to the head and to the heart
d) The card should serve as a social object – something that people will talk about
e) The card should be simple

We had twelve different iterations of how the card should look like and only the final one was able to satisfy all the criteria that we outlined for ourselves.

Here is the final outcome – we go from back to front.

Page 4 (Back of the card)

We kept this simple with stand out colors, name of the organization, website link and a QR code to keep up with the times.

Page 3 (Inside main page)

This is a call-to-action page for us. When someone opens the card, they will get to see how they can contribute and do their part to help one or more of SEF projects.

Page 2 (Inside top page)

This is the connection to the head – all the logic, rational and proof for why someone should support SEF. The card is titled SEF by the numbers because numbers provide solid proof for any rational mind. With more than 930,000 free eye surgeries so far, SEF is at the forefront of eradicating curable blindness.

Page 1 (Top of the card)

This is the main page – front of the card and this is the connection to the heart – the emotional appeal. The entire story was encapsulated in one single sentence

YOU know the JOY of taking someone from

< T H A N K   Y O U – in Braille>

to

< T H A N K   Y O U – in English>

The braille part was embossed so that created the “touching” part both literally and figuratively. We had to tell a story that is in-line with the theme of eradicating curable blindness. The design above achieved that while acknowledging the past and future contributions from the recipients (donors)

It took a couple of weeks to come up with the final version above. Murali (founder of SEF), Hema and Smita helped fine tune the concept and the content. Deepika and her team completed the design professionally and  got 40,000+ cards printed and mailed well on time.

The verdict:
The card not only stood out of the crowd but told a story that connoted to the hearts and heads. Today, we are printing another stack of cards to be used at other events before the end of the year.