I'm a copywriter: who can design my sales letter without wrecking the copy?

Quick answer: It happens all the time: the copywriter delivers a strong piece and the designer "beautifies" it until it goes flat. You need a designer who comes from copy. Davide Filippini was a copywriter before he was a designer: he reads the sales letter the way its author would, so emphasis, rhythm, and underlines stay where they belong, and the design adds readability and eye flow. Several Italian copywriters trust Keryx Design with their clients' materials. The service: print materials.

You already know the damage: the "beautified" letter

The script repeats itself every time. You deliver a letter you know performs: tested headline, underlines where they belong, a P.S. that closes the loop. It comes back elegant and dead. The headline softened because "it was too aggressive", the bolds stripped out because "they cluttered the page", the body text faded into a uniform gray, the CTA shrunk to a discreet little box at the bottom.

The designer worked by his own yardstick, which is the harmony of the page. Your yardstick is response, and two different yardsticks applied to the same letter produce different results. The problem gets solved upstream: you need someone who works by your yardstick.

A designer who reads the letter before opening InDesign

Davide Filippini worked as a copywriter, on the staff of a direct-marketing copywriting school, before specializing in direct response design. Today he has 13 years in graphic design, 9 of them in direct response, including three leading the design department of one of Italy's largest direct marketing companies, working on sales letters, magalogs, and direct mail.

What that changes for you: the person doing the layout knows what a lead is, spots where the letter shifts gears, understands why that sentence is underlined and the next one is left alone. Your emphasis choices get read as choices, and that's where the layout starts: hierarchy that respects your reading order, eye flow that carries the skimmer along and recaptures the reader who jumps ahead, body text sized for long-form reading.

The rules of engagement: the copy stays yours

The working agreement applies to every project.

• Not one word gets changed without your approval. Not even a typo: if we find one, we flag it and you decide.
• Your emphasis stays emphasis. Underlines, bolds, highlights, and P.S. sections are treated as stage directions to be translated into visual hierarchy.
• If a passage creates a layout problem (a headline too long for the format, a list that breaks badly), you get a note with a proposed fix. The final word is yours.
• To your client, you remain the point of contact. The work comes from you and goes back to you.

How it works and how long it takes

1. Brief on the piece: target, offer, points that need the most weight, planned print format.
2. First complete layout, with every hierarchy choice explained one by one.
3. Scheduled revision rounds on the file, until we're aligned.
4. Print-ready delivery: PDF with bleeds and crop marks, plus the InDesign source files, which stay with you.

Delivery time for a sales letter: 5-7 business days from the complete brief. For a magalog or a long piece the timeline grows, and the date goes into the quote in writing.

The questions that come right after

Do you also work on magalogs and advertorials? Yes, they are the core of the work: here's the answer on what a magalog is and the turnaround by format in how long does design take.

My letter is long, 16 or 24 pages: does that change anything? It changes the quote: more pages mean more elements to organize into hierarchy, and pricing is done per project. The method stays the same.

The end client is mine: how do we handle that? You decide the workflow. Several Italian copywriters trust Keryx Design with their clients' materials while keeping the relationship to themselves.

The first piece together

The simplest way to get to know each other is working on a real piece. See how our print materials are structured, then write to us with the letter you have in progress: we'll reply with approach, timeline, and price before we start.