Members Only: Hagerty Creative Wins The Neenah Paper Award With an Ultra-Exclusive Membership Kit

Published

Driving is an act that engages all of your senses. And it should, too, as you need to use the ol’ eyeballs so you don’t careen off the road into a fiery mess at the bottom of some ravine.

Aside from keeping your eyes on the road and alert to oncoming traffic, other more nuanced moments speak to the joys of getting behind the wheel. Just rolling the window down on a cross-country road trip and feeling the wind on your face can be therapeutic.

But even inside your car, there are little moments of joy to savor—the touch of the steering wheel or the smell of good leather, or at least that’s what I keep telling myself as I vacuum dog hair out of my Subaru (also, there’s not an inch of leather to be found).

Screen Shot 2023-07-26 at 5.35.15 PM.png

Those tiny tactile details inspired Hagerty Creative’s Neenah Paper Award-winning design from this past year’s Dieline Awards for the ultra-exclusive Radius membership kit, an invitation-only car club created by the classic automobile insurance company Hagerty.

Hagerty’s internal design team was tasked with creating a gift for members who were deeply involved in the car community, the kind of person who owns multiple classic cars and could name all of the rides Jerry Seinfeld drives in Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee without breaking a sweat. Above all, it needed to feel “automotive” and exclusive. Integral to the gift was each member getting their membership card.

Screen Shot 2023-07-26 at 5.36.26 PM.png

Yes, they could have gone digital or passed along a fancy bottle of wine, but they wanted to do something special for welcoming folks into their inaugural club.

“Driving a car is super tactile. It touches on so many of your senses. You have the window down, and you can smell fresh air or fuel. There’s the texture of the wheel. If you’re using a stick shift, you’re using your arms and legs simultaneously. It’s very involved. So we wanted something that felt like that,” says Jesus Roldan, art director at Hagerty Creative.

And what’s inside that kit?

Screen Shot 2023-07-26 at 5.36.58 PM.png

For starters, recipients get a membership card that resembles an engine plate, and they also get the first issue of a new quarterly automotive magazine only available to members intended to ignite their passion for all things cars further. Even more impressive, they get a one-of-a-kind illustration of one of their favorite vehicles in their garage, hand-drawn by artist Dwight Knowlton.

Screen Shot 2023-07-26 at 5.38.43 PM.png
Screen Shot 2023-07-26 at 5.38.59 PM.png

But to get all those precious goodies, you must go through the entire package—and what a package it is. “We started by making sure all the papers we chose had some type of texture or feeling and that you interacted with the package by ripping it open,” Roldan says.

Similar to unboxing an Apple product and how impressive that is, Roldan and his team wanted to build anticipation with the packaging. Once you tear into the membership kit via the pull tab, you’re greeted by the smell of Le Labo Santal 33, a unisex fragrance that screams luxury, or at least walking into a pretty swanky hotel. “My thought was if you open up a box of cookies or dessert or something like that, you get that smell versus just the box smelling like cardboard when you open it,” Roldan notes. “We wanted them to get a hint of something. So when we tested it out, it was subtle enough that you got the hint. But it was strong enough where you wouldn’t have a bad reaction.”

Screen Shot 2023-07-26 at 5.39.21 PM.png
Screen Shot 2023-07-26 at 5.40.09 PM.png

To bring those tactile elements home, they opted to use Neenah Techweave papers, a product they use throughout the Radius program, whether it’s for brochures or shipping out replacement membership cards. “I love textures like this,” Roldan says. “You touch it, and it feels really nice. It feels like something between leather and carbon fiber.” To contrast this, they opted for black, smoother folding board papers for the internal folder in a deep vellum finish coupled with some graceful embossing and foiling techniques.

To bring the experience to life, Hagerty had to lean on their partners. Their printer, Holland Litho Printing Services, gave them valuable advice on how to present the kit so that the papers wouldn’t crease. Additionally, Neenah would send them countless paper samples, so they could really nail the texture they wanted for the project, in addition to helping them keep the fragrance’s oil from seeping into the box. What’s more, the scent held for months.

Neenah_Idea Shop_06_13_2022-6159.jpg

“The Radius car club membership experience kit is a striking example of how powerful the use of uncoated, textured papers can be to elevate your design,” says Vanessa Crowe-Murff, senior graphic designer for Neenah. ”This is a multi-sensory experience that gives tactile thrills using pull tabs, scented papers, and textured folding board with minimal embossing and printing. Congratulations to Jesus Roland and the Hagerty Design team on a stunning brand experience, and we can’t wait to see how they use Neenah’s paper and packaging products in the future.”

“I’m a huge paper nerd,” Roldan admits. “Being able to choose all the little details is what I’m here for, and getting feedback about how people were actually touched by their painting because they’re emotionally attached to their cars was very special.”

“We wanted to make sure that this was a gift they couldn’t buy anywhere else,” he adds.

Screen Shot 2023-07-26 at 5.39.44 PM.png

While I don’t see myself receiving an invitation to this club anytime soon—just 300 of these went out in the first round— hopefully, they will come to appreciate the natural aesthetic beauty of my own whip, particularly the backseat covered in drawings made using permanent marker courtesy of my very talented children. Clearly, that’s worth a Knowlton illustration, no?

Fingers crossed, though, my membership kit is already in the mail, and I look forward to taking in the smells of Le Labo Santal 33 as I clean up Taki and Cheezits crumbs.