Ampleforth College
- One of the world's foremost Catholic boarding schools
Thinking outside the folder...
Ampleforth, one of the world’s leading Catholic boarding schools, asked us to produce a new set of literature for their prospectus pack that was bold, striking and modern. Keeping it simple was key. We took quotes from pupils, staff and school alumni and used these as the basis for the booklets. The quotes give a first hand account of what it means to be at Ampleforth and when backed up with imagery give a real insight into the ethos of the college.
Sector: Education
What we did:
Just because you’ve always had a folder doesn’t mean you always have to...
Having done extensive research into the mailing of school prospectus packs we’ve found that they are inflexible, expensive to print and post and more often than not arrive damaged. Ampleforth’s prospectus pack included a prospectus, magazine and subsidiary documents. From the start we planned a multi purpose package to work not only at open days but that could also be mailed out cost effectively.
Our solution was a transparent sealable plastic mailing sleeve. This allowed for different quantities of booklets to be put into the pack, was not only easy to use but also took up a lot less storage space, and because it could go straight into the post was much cheaper to send than the usual school folder in a padded envelope. In fact we saved them over £1,000 on their postage costs just by changing the way in which it was sent out.
We thought about all the little practical details too:
- Ease of use for the admissions office staff.
- Ease of packaging and posting - all the booklets have the same back cover so that no matter what order they are put into the pack the back had a return address on.
- A simple covering sheet that could have the recipients address printed directly onto it.
- The mailing sleeve is resealable so that the recipient has something to keep everything in.
The strong style we created for the literature was then developed across a variety of open day banners and exhibition stands.
Expertise:
They translated our desire to bring more student voice to our publications into something modern and fresh that has immediate impact.
They were always on hand with ideas of how we could improve our offering and their choice of packaging for our full prospectus packs was genius!
The level of service we have received has been impeccable. Having worked with a number of design firms in the past, I can honestly say that Mercer are absolutely at the top of their game.
CLAIRE EVANS, MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER