Self-Mailers

Self-mailers are like brochures that are printed on thicker paper and folded, sealed with a wafer tab and sent without an envelope. When designing those, it’s important to remember that the folded side has to be under the address, and the indicia and address area are prepared as in the post cards shown in the previous page. The important thing to remember about self-mailers is that they all need to be wafer sealed and THE OPEN END HAS TO BE ABOVE THE ADDRESS!!!! Otherwise you have to use two wafer seals (at an additional expense) and there is a greater chance that the self mailer will get damaged in the post office, because in their high speed machines it will be forced to stand up on it's open side, which is weaker than the folded side. I know this because I once took a trip to Manhattan's Morgan Station and saw these huge room sized machines where mail was blown through these huge tubes and stood on their ends to be read by the optical scanners.

This is a newsletter that we mailed for the Park Slope Geriatric Center. It was printed on a glossy 11 x 17 inch sheet and folded in half and then in thirds and tabbed with a wafer seal. To the right is a remittence envelope that we inserted into the newsletter before wafer sealing.