20 Comments
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tio ryan's avatar

Fantastic piece! I've been fascinated with security envelope patterns for a long time, so it's nice to see I'm not alone.

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Tyson's avatar

Living near Atlanta, I thought a trap street meant a street that had many illicit drug dealers, but I've learned something new. I still have a current-ish 2023 Rand McNally road atlas, that I much prefer to Google Maps or whatever other map apps are out there. I'm fight the urge to find the trap streets located within the atlas.

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Elizabeth Fox's avatar

That collage of security patterns is so beautiful! What a great roundup of links. There goes my day...

Here's a stick figure I saw in January. I guess they don't want you to hang around looking at your phone but what is the electric plug? https://www.flickr.com/photos/piemouth/54731693760/in/dateposted/

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Patrick S.'s avatar

Something akin to throwing a toaster in a bathtub? Dunno!

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Patrick S.'s avatar

I work at a credit union and have mailed out literally millions of pieces of mail over the years. Not once have I inspected our security tinted envelopes. Off the top of my head I'd say we use the Wesco Confetti style tint as it's probably the cheapest. When I get back to work tomorrow I'm definitely going to check it out!

As for the B on the envelope I'm theorizing it means Bottom. When the factory worker is loading the unfinished envelope for it to be assembled it's probably a cue to them as to load it into whatever machine they use.

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Paul Lukas's avatar

Ah, good call on the "B"! Hadn't thought of that.

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Patrick S.'s avatar

Upon my return to work today I almost immediately checked our supply of security envelopes. Apparently we're using the Wesco "hidden W" style. Curiosity sated!

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Mike's avatar

I'm absolutely IN LOVE with the design of that Hamburg office building. He has another office building (Steckelhörn 11) in Hamburg that's also fascinating.

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Munch Suchland's avatar

I don't know how, when, why but I remember sometime back a page popping up on my Facebook feed about people making items for their miniatures and/or dollhouses that used every day items to make miniature everyday items. They used security envelopes for a variety of things. Rugs, wallpaper, suitcases, and even mini envelopes. I remember wondering why it popped up on my feed as I wasn't interested in miniatures/dollhouses, but after I clicked and scrolled, I realized the Facebook algorithm might just have known I'd be interested in that one single part of it.

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PK's avatar

The moiré effect in the tiktok video is nauseating.

Working in video / TV production forever, it's something I know is a pain to fix but I always hate seeing it.

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Paul Lukas's avatar

Probably my fault, not the TikToker's. There's no way (at least that I'm aware of) to embed a TikTok video on Substack, so I shot a video of the video as it played on my computer, and then I embedded that. So it's a second-generation video, which probably didn't help from a moiré standpoint.

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PK's avatar

No worries! Even if you stare at the static images, it can happen like a magic eye effect. Just something that some people are more sensitive to than other. Just a nuisance really.

I appreciate acknowledgement and get to say this "you just wanted to use the word moiré" Ha!

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Groovymarlin's avatar

So cool! But it's driving me insane that Weston's ad sheet has an apparent typo. Shouldn't it say "OUR standard FDIC tints..."?

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Paul Lukas's avatar

Yes. But hey, we all make typos.

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Patrick S.'s avatar

I see what you did there.

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Anne Kadet's avatar

FINALLY!!!

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Mike Engle's avatar

All of the links still work, but that TikTok user appears to have formerly gone by "fuelingafantasy" (so "fuelingfantasy" would be misspelled as missing the A), but he appears to have changed his name to "alex.jack.b"

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Paul Lukas's avatar

Thanks, Mike. Will fix.

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Diana's avatar

Americus Callahan sounds like he should be a traveling salesman peddling patent medicines.

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T. J. Gregson's avatar

Very fascinating Paul. Another great article!

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