Faced with the annual challenge of How to Thank My Clients, this year I vowed to be ready. HOW's Promotional Annual is filled with over-the-top graphic designer's holiday gifts, some of which surely take an entire year to produce. I needed an affordable solution for about 25 people, and settled on homemade cookies in a custom-designed container. The "Cookie Canon", riffed on explosive themes, and a list of "How to Surrender to the Battle of the Bulge", by eating the cookies. Finding the right tubes was the biggest challenge, most were made of heavy cardboard and too narrow for cookies. The breakthrough came by typing "paper tubes" rather than "mailing tubes" in the search engine and voila! up popped Cleveland-based Custom Paper Tubes, who kindly retrofitted the tube dimensions to fit like a glove into the mailing tubes. There has been much debate about ROI of holiday promotions. I prefer to view them as a token of appreciation and a chance to design something special.
