Mailing Labels With Your Personalized Touch
Remember, you can never please anybody, but sometimes you have to start pleasing yourself. Start easing on your mails, but not on your courteousness. Using technology does not necessarily have to mean informality. Your mailing labels can still be as warm and welcoming as your own handwriting should be, and you need not lose any friends over your decision to bring yourself into the twenty-first century.
Ask anyone and they’ll likely say that having handwritten return addresses will feel more personalized to them than if using mailing labels. Even you would prefer a gesture of thanks written by hand rather than labels printed out on the computer and informally stuck or printed on an envelope. For weddings, it is generally thought to be rude of the happy couple if their invitations hold computer-generated mailing labels, especially if they are spending it with a small gathering of family and closest friends.
However, we all know how tedious writing the same thing over and over again can be, and how it can be damaging not only to our hands and eyes, but also to the available time that we have. Not everyone has the luxury of time to simply sit down, organize your thank you notes or invitations. Moreover, mailing labels are convenient because you can usually order them online, with some instructions attached, and get the results within the next few hours.
The rules of etiquette versus practicability need not be distant. In fact, there is a way that this can be bridged—and hopefully overcome over the next few years. The best compromise will have to be designing your mailing labels yourself.
Nowadays, there are simple and easy-to-use labeling programs that can help you with the step-by-step procedure of making your personal mailing labels. Programs can be made specifically for such tasks, like Print Shop Elements, or they may be simple publishing tools that include such service, such as Microsoft Publisher or Adobe IndDesign. If you’re confident enough, you can even use graphic programs such as Adobe Photoshop or Corel Draw. Doing your mailing labels at home gives you the power to make a uniquely designed mailing label. Most of all, it also gives you the power to decide on the layout of your label, as well as give you the option of personalized raphics, such as pictures that you took, or an art that you or a friend has done (just make sure you have their permission to use it!).
Nowadays, most labeling and graphic programs come with the option of printing directly on envelope. If you’ve already chosen your envelope style and have it in bulk at your house, you can do several test prints to see if your work is acceptable to your eye. You can use your creativity to make something simple into something elegant, such as using borders for your return address, dotting the margins of your envelope. If you have the program and hardware, such as a table handy, you may even use your own handwriting as a font to write your return address or any other message you’d wish to put on the envelope, and simply copy it and use it for your mailing label.