IN 2029, I read how Robin Sloan leveraged direct mail and AI to tell (hundreds?) of unique stories guided by a form his readers filled out. Eventually what came in the mail was a unique story with a custom map. It was a software generated, printed, and mailed thing that goes through the mail slot.
Direct mail is how AT&T sends you bills, Ace Hardware sends coupon cards, etc. Powerful print and send companies can send uniquely designed mail to each address. “Hello [YOUR NAME], you have been selected for…”
If we “hacked” direct mail 📪 — put the magic✨ of designing and sending mail in everyones hands — what could we do?
Advocacy and Activism
Empowering youth with the “power tools 🧰” of changemaking is one way we bring civics education to life. Inside google slides, youth create the two-sided postcard. They iterate on their message, design, and call to action and, with teacher approval, lock it up for production.
In a google form, each student:
- Enters the addresses of their chosen recipients (including their address for a souvenir)
- Uploads their exported
FRONT.jpgandBACK.jpgslides from Google Slides
Now for the magic✨:
- 📪mail.magic✨ prints 🖨️ and mails 📪 your individual campaign
- …and seven days later, its waiting for you at home.
Storytelling
The seed🌱 of this was a short run of bedtime stories. Imagine a book you read to a young one. Its the story of Worksters and Whizbang, two “creative cats,” spunky changemakers obsessed with mind expanding 🤯 ideas like evaporative cooling that shape their behavior and help them invent projects for a just and adaptable the world. …It all gets weird when shortly after you buy the book or comic book… (and fill out the online form) and a piece of mail comes through the mail slot, addressed to your kid, from… Whizbang.
Can we break the fourth wall of our stories? Can we can engage families around stories that suspend disbelief in new ways? With a clever structure, characters might leave the pages of our books and slip through our mail slots, like Flat Stanley.
How
- A QR code at the end of the story opens up a webform on your phone.
- Inside the form, a Q & A between fictional characters and families ensues…
- A week or so later, your kiddo gets a custom postcard from Worksters and Whizbang, with answers and doodles responding to their very own ideas….
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