Tuesday, March 2, 2010

4.6 Million Twitter Followers, but Personal Stationery Makes The Lasting Impression

I was at the dentist's office today waiting for my appointment and leafing through the latest issue of Details Magazine. This is the magazine's 10th anniversary and one of the pages features a few congratulatory notes.

Last year, I pointed out that one of the icons of digital communication and social media - Facebook - turned to paper and fine letterpress printing to thank its advertisers. Here's a link to that beautiful presentation.

Back to the dentist's office and the magazine. I was very pleased to see who had written the first note on the page, as it provides further evidence of the power of the pen and fine stationery:

 

You will recall Ashton's recent race to the top of the Twitter world. Today, he has more Twitter followers than anyone in the world - 4.6 million!

But as you can see from the above, even Ashton Kutcher uses personalized stationery when the message is meant to be meaningful. It obviously was meaningful to Details. Other notes on the page are written by Jason Bateman, Daniel Radcliffe, Matthew McConoughey and, yes, even Adam Lambert.

Here's a link to a slide show of a couple of dozen congratulatory notes on personalized stationery. I imagine you will recognize a name or two.

P.S. In a few of the notes, you will see the person's name struck through at the top. That is to indicate the note is of the most personal nature.

With best regards,

Peter

P.P.S. I have no idea if these notes are on Crane stationery. It's none of my business one way or the other.

4 comments:

Adoniram said...

I did not know about the strike-through mannerism. Do you have more information on this? I noted that Tom Ford had struck through his last name, is this the usual method? What a great tradition, I had never heard of this.

Elizabeth Howard said...

I must say I always learn something interesting from you Peter! I also did not know about the strike-through meaning and am intrigued by it. Please share more info on this if you have it and/or other handwritten secrets we may not know.

Thanks for sharing your insight!
Elizabeth

James said...

I, too, an fascinated by this bit of personal correspondence etiquette. I'm surprised that while so many people, from this sample of messages sent to DETAILS, seem to understand and use the strikethrough method for personal correspondence, multiple Google searches produced no relevant hits.

I'd love to learn more,

James

Unknown said...

I love that on quite a few pieces, it was obvious that engraving had been used to personalize the stationery.

My favorite pieces were from Miuccia Prada and Ralph Lauren.