Top 10 Creative Responses To Junk Mail

By Erik Bratt
ProQuo
August 2008

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Stop Junk Mail Now - it's Free!

Junk mail is renowned for cluttering mailboxes, increasing the risk of identity theft, and, of course, killing millions of trees every year. Not surprisingly, it elicits annoyance from most people. But, believe it or not, it also elicits creativity from others. Below I've compiled a list of the “Top 10 Creative Responses To Junk Mail,” accompanied by a bunch of cool pictures. Personally, I'd be content to never receive another piece of junk mail for the rest my life, but who knows, maybe these people are onto something. Maybe there's more to junk mail than meets the eye. If nothing else, these responses represent some interesting and unconventional ways to recycle.

10. Custom Portraits

A self-proclaimed “rabid recycler,” Artizona artist Sandy Schimmel uses unwanted materials, such as junk mail, to create impressionistic portraits. Her portraits focus on individual faces and explore themes such as beauty and fashion. Here's a quote from her Web site: "I believe we are an aggregate of tiny bits: who we are and where we've been - or who we want or pretend to be. The tesserae, the 'tiles,' I create from junk mail represent those bits in color and texture and meaning.” Yeah, I'm not sure what that means exactly, but I'm impressed anyway.

9. Venetian Blinds

A blogger named Matthew Rasmussen was interested in making practical use out of things people are expected to throw away. He theorized (correctly) that he could attach about three months worth of junk mail to his venetian blinds and significantly lower the amount of light passing through his kitchen window (and still be able to raise and lower the blinds without any difficulty). The process included a whole lot of measuring, bending, taping, and even some beer drinking (not a process requirement, I'm assuming). Full details on the process are available on his blog.

8. Art Sculpture

A 54-year-old woman from Newcastle, England, constructed a modern art installation just outside her front door. Or to put it another way, she stored a tremendous amount of junk mail on a tall metal spike. A BBC article explained that the artist, Anne Cohen, “came up with the idea to get people talking about the volume of junk mail delivered in her neighbourhood.” Cohen has an undergraduate degree in design and public art, as well as a master's in art and the environment.

Next to Cohen's sculpture is another cool example of art via junk mail. Created by a collaborative artist team named Burtonwood and Holmes, it's a three-quarter scale Abrams tank covered in junk mail and sales sheets! Below the tank are matching missiles that would prove equally useless (yet eco-friendly) on the battlefield.

7. Response Package

Many are inclined to view themselves as victims of junk mail, but some creative (and/or angry) types will take aggressive counter-action. These folks don't just demand their removal from direct mailing lists, but rather, they send direct mailers bricks (that right, bricks). The Office of Strategic Influence Web site explains that direct mailers pay approximately 20 cents an ounce on their pre-paid postage. An eight pound package, therefore, would end up costing them approximately $25. So if you don't mind paying a little extra for a larger envelope or shipping box, your revenge would be moderately significant.

6. Paper

This creative response to junk mail is probably one of the most practical – make paper from it! Not every type of junk mail is appropriate (glossy and shiny papers won't create a cohesive texture), but the process is still worthwhile to learn. The basic supply requirements include: junk mail, a blender/food processor, water, and a window screen. And here's the basic process:

1. Rip the junk mail into small pieces – the smaller the better.
2. Put the junk mail pieces into the blender and add water. The ratio of water to junk mail should be approximately 3:1, but you can add less water for a thicker paper (and vice versa). (Optional: throw in some food coloring to make the paper any color you desire).
3. Pour the mixture onto the window screen, and let the water completely drain out.
4. Flip the mixture onto a towel (or some other absorbent), and wait until the mixture is completely dry.

If your paper starts to curl up after it's dried, you can simply put a towel over it and carefully iron along the edges. You can use the paper as gift wrap, writing material, or simply as bragging rights with all your eco-crazy friends!

5. Mailbox Art

Some creative consumers like to stop junk mail before it ever reaches their mailboxes. But rather then communicating their wishes to direct mailers, they let their mailboxes do the talking – hopefully, the postman will actually listen! The first two mailboxes clearly aren't receptive to junk mail, and the third one... well, it sorta speaks for itself. Yeah, I doubt anyone would want to mess with its owner.

4. Skulls

The volume of junk mail we receive can sometimes make you want to kill someone, so it's only natural to make skulls out of the mail itself. I mean... right? Well, you can at least see how this response to junk mail could prove therapeutic (and perhaps prevent un-necessary violence towards direct mailers).

These skulls were the brainchild (pun intended) of a man who posts a new image of a skull every day on his blog, appropriately titled, Skull-A-Day. The blogger usually throws his junk mail into the recycling bin, but one day, he realized it could be turned into some pretty unique art. The end product was coined "skunk mail" (skull + junk mail).

3. Mulch

A reader of the finance blog Get Rich Slowly regularly shreds his junk mail and makes mulch out of it. Since mulch is basically composed of tiny bits of trees, he's recycling and his gardening no longer takes the same toll on the environment. Here are some of the guidelines he follows to account for junk mail's ink and varied material:

1. “I only shred the non-glossy stuff, and try to avoid colored ink as much as possible. Since I’m shredding to avoid identity theft in the first place, and credit applications these days contain colored ink, I can’t stay 100% black and white, but I can accept that.”
2. “I shred plastic items like credit cards and CDs separately and discard.”
3. “I only use the shreds where food is not grown, just to be safe. You can also use it in the bottom of flower pots inside the house to save potting soil.”

2. Furniture

Why throw away junk mail when you can sit on it? Although this probably wasn't part of UK artist Chrissie MacDonald's thought process, she recently created a chair from all the shopping catalogues in her mailbox. Conceptually brilliant? Sure. But you still don't want to watch a three-hour football game in one of these puppies. Check out more of the artist's junk mail creations (and other works) on her site.

Slightly off topic, but the chairs to the side of MacDonald's, produced by British design company Pli, were created from PlayStation 2 consoles (with some metal and plastic thrown in for support). Pretty impressive, huh? I wonder when the X-Box chair will hit markets.

1. Trees

A graphic designer, seeking a creative way to recycle her junk mail, ended up making 3-dimensional trees. As outlined on her blog, the basic materials include: junk mail, bristol paper, spray adhesive, scissors, and a cutting surface. And here's the basic process:

1. Adhere the bristol paper to the back of the junk mail to create a firm material.
2. Draw the trees on the bristol paper such that the tree trunks maintain a similar width.
3. Make perpendicular cuts to the base of each tree. Half of the trees should have cuts that go ¾ up them, and the other half should have cuts that go ¼ down – basically, you'll need to slide them into one another like puzzle pieces.
4. Erase any pencil marks.

When you're finished, the trees should be half white and half the color of your junk mail – which is pretty dang cool. Personally, I've never seen a bipolar tree before... or one made from junk mail.

Conclusion

If your response to junk mail is not a creative one, and you’d rather just get rid of it, there are a number of service for stopping junk mail and managing catalogs and other offers. Click here for a comparison chart of different free services. Or, sign up now for free.

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Stop Junk Mail Now - it's Free!