Warning: Do not attempt to read this appendix unless you're prepared to face the crushing reality of poorly formatted letter-writing.
The Envelope Tragedy: A cautionary tale of the perils of poorly designed envelope templates.
It's 1999. The dot-com bubble is about to burst, and the world is about to enter a period of unrelenting despair. But in a small, windowless office in Silicon Valley, one man, Bob, has a vision: to create the most heinous, the most egregious, the most utterly confounding envelope template the world has ever seen.
Bob's Envelope Template of Unending Suffering, as it came to be known, was a behemoth of bad design. It had too many fields, too many fonts, and too many colors. It was the anti-Mueller, the anti-Friend, the anti-Everything.
And so, the Envelope Tragedy unfolded: Bob's template was rejected by every major mailroom in the country. His clients were driven to the brink of insanity. The postal system, once a noble institution, was brought to its knees.
But from the ashes of this disaster, a new era of design awareness was born. A generation of envelope writers rose up, determined to create better templates, to avoid the pitfalls of Bob's creation.
And so, if you're reading this, take heed: avoid the Envelope Tragedy at all costs.
For more, visit: Appendix 2: The Envelope Redemption