Snail Mail My Email

I heart the concept behind snailmailmyemail.org:

Type a message to a friend, family member, pet, politician, or lover, and e-mail it to [email protected]. Then sit back and relax while your email is handwritten, sent out, and delivered to the recipient of your choosing, completely free of charge!

(via Erik Spiekermann)

28 Comments leave a comment below

  1. Really??? So take the time to type it up and then have someone else write it… this is silly. By the way, I think Grandpa would notice if it was someone else’s writing on my letter to him. Okay, I admit this would be nice for people who can’t physically write. I’m totally contradicting myself now… ha!

  2. And I just signed up to volunteer… Maybe it’s not such a bad idea after all!

  3. How does this save time or effort at all? Here’s an idea, if you want something “genuine” in an age of digital anonymity, WRITE YOUR OWN LETTER.

  4. It’s a fun and experimental idea. That’s all.

  5. It was just taken down :( Apparently the response was overwhelming so yay! It was not a silly idea after all.

  6. In terms of design, this is complete and utter plagiarism.
    Strikes a somewhat similar resemblance to this does it not? http://golivebutton.com/

  7. A really nice idea, but an absolute copy and rip-off of the golivebutton website. (good research Anna)

    Baffles me how people can be stupid enough to rip of other peoples designs and think that they will get away with it.

    At least they have been exposed in this instance.

  8. Snail Mail my Email Fail.

  9. The snail shell made of an ‘@’ is super clever!

  10. D’oh I wanted to volunteer! Oh well :(

  11. I totally agree with Trevor, in fact i will repeat what he wrote: “How does this save time or effort at all? Here’s an idea, if you want something “genuine” in an age of digital anonymity, WRITE YOUR OWN LETTER.”
    Plus: it’s not experimental, it’s a running live website.
    Plus: If you offer something that’s supposed to be genuine/authentic, you might want to use a original design, not a rip off.

  12. guys you so wrong! Golivebutton and swissmiss have only one thing in common… similar colours. It has nothing to do with the idea behind it. One is about web sites and the other about letters!

    Sometimes i wonder if people give genuine feedback or they are just jealous of other’s ideas!!

  13. I’d love to see the trolls’ evidence, as to who made what first to claim it was a “rip off”.

    Bloody weekend-keyboard-warriors *shakes fist* lol

  14. I thought this feature was a joke, but apparently not. Clearly some people find this a good concept, but I just don’t get this at all. The only benefit is having a handwritten letter sent for free, but the whole point of a handwritten letter is that it’s personal, but doesn’t this service defeat the whole purpose if it’s some random company doing the writing? Pass.

  15. Ha, victims of their success or of swissmiss? :)
    ‘dear all, thank you so much for your support. with over 900 requests already today, it is clear that there is a lot of love for snail mail. :)
    however, with such a huge response, comes a lot of pressure and a need to re-evaluate the structure of this project.

    please check back in the next day or two for more details. :) this project will be going forward, but in a more focused capactiy.’

  16. @marydoll – What are you talking about? Anna was talking about the design of the site, not the content. And as far as the design goes, it is a complete and utter rip off.
    It sounds like, from your message, that you are totally unaware of what design (or the similar colours) is.

    “Sometimes I wonder if people give genuine feedback or they are just jealous of other’s ideas!!” – marydoll, I could not agree with you more.

  17. This work also in europe?

  18. @Carl MH Barenbrug – I think the idea is that a handwritten letter is SOO quaint nowadays that any handwritten letter even if not written in your own handwriting is still something “special.”

    And it kind of is. I can probably count on two hands the number of friends whose handwriting I’d actually recognize.

  19. An avalanche of misunderstandings seems to have hit this comment thread.

    @marydoll: Anna and Geoff, when they mentioned plagiarism, were talking about the striking similarities between “Snail mail my email” project website and the design of “Golivebutton”. Not once did they claim to have found similarities between Swissmiss and any other website.

    @Everyone who thinks this is a stupid idea: of course you have the right to your own opinion, but to think this is a serious venture, really? I think it’s apparent that this is not a serious business plan, but a a fun experiment exploring the ties between the modern, digital world and the world just a decade or two ago. It’s a short period, (probably) someone’s sideproject, trying to promote (in its own way) writing letters with pen and paper. Sure, it might strike a bit weird, but it sure beats a website simply stating: “Write a letter!”.

    Also, I’m having a hard time understanding Alex’s logic, who claims that online sites that live and running, can’t be, or aren’t, experimental. But I’m really not going to get into that and simply assume it’s a question of semantics.

    I will probably never use the services of this short time project, but I love the mere idea that for the last 24 hours I’ve spent more time thinking about writing a traditional letter, using a pen and a paper, than I have for a very long time. So in that sense, I guess they’ve done their job. Which is why I can hardly see it as “pointless”.

  20. I’ve done a similar project. My concept was to assist people in writing difficult letters, letters they’d been meaning to write but just couldn’t find the words. So after a brief conversation, I took their meaning and put it into words, clarifying, synthesizing and simplifying their own words.
    This became a therapeutic process and sometimes emotional process. And at the end, I gave them the letter to send. I found many people who had just such a letter inside themselves and welcomed assistance in getting it out: Mothers reaching out to a missing grandparent, husbands apologizing to estranged children, even birthday greetings.
    We don’t have much time in this world to connect and one day a person is gone. In my book, anything that gets someone to connect with another is welcome.

  21. Nice design copying Ivan. @SwissMiss do you condone this?

    Original – http://golivebutton.com/
    Copy – Snail Mail

  22. It’s a cool, fun experiment that is down at the moment because of all the Erik Spiekermann’s and Swiss Miss’s followers, but yeah it looks exactly like that Go Live! site, not that fun anymore

  23. ya’ll are haters.

  24. Good artists borrow, great artists steal

  25. Great idea. Here’s another variation on the theme:
    http://www.lazyluddite.com/

  26. Maybe I’ve been watching too much Mad Men, but if this is secretly a marketing campaign for the US Postal Service, it’s totally working. Think how many stamps will be purchased! I just bought stamps for the first time in probably 2 years.

  27. Hi everyone, this is Ivan from Snail Mail My Email.

    I’ve chatted with the designers behind the GO LIVE BUTTON design and have apologized for so closely referencing their work. My intention was not malicious but complimentary, and I even credited the site’s design inspiration to them in the footer of the site. I now understand that was not enough, and once confronted with this issue, I immediately removed the design.

    We now have a new website and design: http://snailmailmyemail.org/

    Thanks,
    +Ivan

  28. My most sincere congratulations.