Project brief: Launching a new business is a tough endeavor at the best of times. Competing for business during the holiday gift season can be downright masochistic. Matter Strategic Design needed to raise awareness of itself among prospective clients and stay top-of-mind with current clients at a time of year when competition was especially active.

Approach: Matter developed a promotional tool that was both beautiful and functional: a notebook that was true to who the firm is and open to who its clients want to be. Like its website, Matter’s notebook focuses on one basic yet critical question: What matters to you?

Visually, the book takes cues from the firm’s corporate identity: simple typography, beautiful paper and a hint of bright yellow in the center of the book all create an elegant presentation. But it’s what’s inside that counts, and in this case that means 11 poignant and often cheeky quotes compiled from Matter’s own website: matter.to.

Matter chose to distribute its books to a select list of prospective and current clients during the weeks following Christmas. This strategy allowed the firm to avoid the clutter of December. It also put the notebook in clients’ hands at a time when they were more likely to read it.

Effectiveness: Clients love Matter’s notebook. Matter’s principal continues to receive complimentary messages from the book’s recipients and requests for copies from others. International and national design media have picked up the story and shared it with design-inclined audiences around the world. Website traffic tripled in the month proceeding the promo’s launch and the notebook can be directly attributed to two new clients.

Nice take on useful sketchbook. Good, emotional way of tying to their personality. Not overselling.