ANDERS J. SVENSSON | COPYWRITING PORTFOLIO

TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE

Copywriting & Game Design

From 2004 to 2008, Veer released an annual summer activity book for creatives. When I started working there in 2006, my very first line of copy for Veer was "You sought the serif?" for that summer's answer key.

The following two summers I flexed my puzzle prowess, and then as summer 2009 approached, our marketing department announced that there wouldn't be budget to print an activity book that year. I lobbied hard for the resources to create a PDF-only version of the book, rather than see the project die.

I got a few designers on board, then the entire team, and then the marketing department — and produced the first PDF-only edition. Over 100,000 customers downloaded it.

The Small Print

“This year’s activity book was written and designed by the Veer creative team. The team would like to welcome you to the future, and though you may have been expecting silver jumpsuits and interstellar space travel, you’ll notice the main innovation is that activity books are now PDFs, not pocketbooks. Print budgets, right? We’re pretty sure the postal system was just holding us back anyway. Now that we’re free of our inky, papery prison, we can enjoy the limitless possibilities that cleverness and bandwidth make possible. At this rate, next year we might just send you an e-mail, and when you open it you’ll be transported to a virtual reality carnival populated by sudoku-peddling carnies and sideshow barkers who speak only in madlibs. Also, angry circus bears. You have a year to get into virtual-circus-bear-fighting condition, starting … now.”