Today I read on the Pentagram’s blog about a project that they recently completed for Saks Fifth Avenue that deserves huge props. Here’s the summary of the story that you can read on their site.

Every year Pentagram creates a holiday card, which is really more of a small book, for their community. For the last couple of years I’ve been fortunate enough to be included on the list and have been blown away by their creation. Two years ago the book was entitled Decipher: Fourteen Cryptograms and featured wonderfully creative puzzles in the context of Pentagram’s elegant visual presentation …. look for “the gaps” below.

In essence, what makes the piece so powerful is that Pentagram delivered an experience that embodied their message. They demonstrate their brilliance rather than talking about it. Even better, they’ve made it tangible so that people can share it with their colleagues. As I discussed in an earlier blog post, making your ideas tangible is key to selling services. Here are some sample Typographic Conundrums for the Saks project, you can click on the image to go to the original post with the answer key:

As it turns out, I was not the only one to fall in love with the Decipher book. Terron Schaefer, Saks’ Senior Vice President of Marketing also loved it and called Pentagram to bring a similar approach to their holiday catalog. Harry Pearce took on the project and integrated a series of typographic conundrums throughout the design.

Here are some of the reasons I think this worked:

• Demonstrate – give people an experience of your smarts, not a message about how smart you are.
• Don’t Clutter – Pentagram sends their holiday cards to people in their network, which means that people know who it’s coming from and don’t see it as clutter. Plus, it has real value and an elegant visual design that is the antithesis of clutter.
• Don’t Interrupt – In other words, let the piece speak, and spread, for itself. Creating a digital version of the work allows the community to share it on their own.
• Make It Relevant - make sure the experience that you offer is relevant to those you are sending it to in the first place … which brings us full-circle to the first bullet-point.

Congrats to Pentagram on another great piece, I’m glad to see it’s leading to new business. And, if anyone has other examples like this, I’d love to hear about them!