The coupon book that you see here was from the fourth series of Dunkin’ Donuts coupon books that I worked on at Single Source. Over the course of a year, we worked on dozens of coupon books that were individualized for markets all across the country.

The first line of coupon books that we did in the fall of 2006 was made of different books of shapes and sizes. From check books sized books to over-sized books, from 12 page books to 20 page books, each book was different. After this initial line, Single Source helped to streamline the entire process. Each market was given guidelines to work within.

For each book, we designed the cover, “glamour” shots for each page (images that highlight a particular product along with a tag line) and each coupon. When it came to the glamour shots, I wanted each to be able to stand on its own. The background color of each page was not to be repeated on a different page. This was a challenge because some products don’t look good on certain colors, and I had to remember to use cool colors on the Iced products, and warm colors on the baked or hot products. The glamour shots were built in Photoshop, and the rest of the book was created by using Quark XPress.

Each Field Marketing Manager (the person who oversees each market) would submit their list of coupons to be included in their respective coupon book. Once the creative on each book was assembled, a PDF would be sent back to the FMM and to the Dunkin’ Donuts legal department. After every aspect of the book was throughly inspected, the files would be collected and shipped off to the printer.

Some of the issues that we encountered were that some of the coupon books were mailed directly to the customer while other books would be included in pre-packed mail (Val-Pak for example.) Each mail house has different specifications that must be met. We would try to design the book so that it would meet all specifications. There were a few times when there needed to be an 11th hour change that required us to re-layout the book. Not fun, but it was a good learning process.

With each line of books, we encountered and overcame many different challenges. All in all, Single Source published over 20 million Dunkin’ Donuts coupon books.