October 2004

By: Jeremy Hoesly, Software reviewer for ResExcellence

Envelopes and Labels Redefined

BeLight Software’s Mail Factory is a label and envelope printing utility that boasts a number of features all wrapped in a Cocoa interface. Transform your envelopes and labels with professional-looking print, complete with graphics, transparency effects, and barcodes among other amenities. In this review, we’ll explore a number of these features in greater detail accompanied by screenshots to satisfy the age-old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.”

Your First Impression: The Assistants

Upon launching Mail Factory you’ll first encounter the assistants which determine what kind of envelope or label you are wanting to design. Two tabs along the top switch between the label and envelope assistants, whereas a panel of three icons in the upper right highlights which step you are doing currently. For labels a comprehensive listing of products from address labels to audio tape labels by a number of vendors is at your fingertips. Products are listed by product number, making it easy to design labels in the exact dimensions and sheet placement needed to print correctly. A search field below the scrolling list aids in quickly narrowing the candidates based on product number, manufacturer, description, or size. For envelopes a thorough listing of American, European, and Japanese sizes is offered. Similarly, a search field is provided to quickly narrow potential sizes based on envelope number, description, or size. Additionally, windowed envelopes are supported in many of the sizes by checking the “Use window” checkbox. In either assistant, a preview of the label sheet or envelope displays what the current selection will look like. Clicking “New Blank” along the bottom will open a blank canvas in the size label or envelope you selected, allowing you to create your own design from scratch, or you can browse through various templates appropriate for your selection by clicking the “Next” button.

In the second step of the assistants, templates are grouped by category— whether one or two addresses are printed or whether graphics will be used, for instance. Only templates that are considered appropriate for the selection you made in the previous step will be shown, consequently you may not see all possible template choices in a single project. Of course if you change your mind, you can always click the “Prev” button to return to the first step. The “Next” button will take you to the third and final step of the assistants.

Finally, once you’ve settled on a template design, you can insert data into it from a number of address book formats, an Excel spreadsheet, or a text file. A search field makes it easy to narrow down selections from the selected data source. Fortunately data also can be entered manually by selecting the “Manual” combo box. What truly makes this step powerful is the batch print feature. Select items from the data source list and click “Add” to include them in the batch-print list. From here, click “Print…” to print out the templates with the selected information. Otherwise, click “Finish” to complete the assistant and enter the customization stage.

Adding the Personal Touch

In addition to the assistants, Mail Factory includes several tools for adding some custom flair to your projects. The Inspector window provides basic text facilities such as font face, font size, type alignment, and type foreground and background colors. Advanced text facilities included with the Cocoa framework, such as text kerning and shadowing, are also available, although not directly from the Inspector. Individual address fields may be turned on and off via the Inspector window as can postal barcodes for a recipient’s address. For graphics the Inspector window provides specific features such as color tinting, transparency gradients, horizontal and vertical mirroring, and opacity. Additionally, text not part of an address and graphics may be rotated to achieve an entirely different effect.

The Design window includes its own arsenal of features. First are tools for drawing boxes and separators as well as for creating freestyle text. Line and fill settings for elements drawn with the first two tools can be adjusted in the Inspector window. Below the tools is a clipart section with various raster and vector images organized into a number of categories. A popup menu makes navigation between categories easy, and a search bar aids in quickly finding graphics across the entire collection. What’s less obvious but more profound is the obscure popup menu in the search field that performs a Google image search on the Internet, displaying results right in the clipart section of the Design window! The next section houses a repository of handling labels grouped by category. Graphics from “Rush!” to “Do Not X-Ray” are included here. The last section provides easy access to graphics in your iPhoto library with a popup navigation menu for traversing albums.

It’s in the Mail

As it’s name suggests, Mail Factory was primarily designed for mail applications. Consequently, this program contains a few features designed to make mail traverse the postal system more efficiently. FIM-A codes for courtesy reply mail with postal barcodes may be printed on envelopes by selecting “Show FIM-A” from the View menu. Barcodes have already been mentioned previously, but these and the address formats are by no means limited to a single country’s specifications. The address format for a sender’s or receiver’s address may be changed by selecting the appropriate country from the Address Format submenu of the Format menu. Selecting “Show Postal Guidelines” from the View menu displays valid regions for address placement in accordance with guidelines for automated mail delivery in the United States and other countries. Dotted blue lines indicate these boundaries. When elements are added to the design, horizontal and/or vertical lines will appear to ensure proper alignment and spacing, giving a more professional look in addition to meeting automation guidelines. Additional guidelines are available by selecting “About Postal Guidelines…” from the Help menu.

Wrapping it Up

Mail Factory contains a wealth of features for envelope and label printing, truly redefining what your outgoing mail will look like. It’s Cocoa interface integrates seamlessly with other OS X applications, one feature that has caused this writer to switch from OpenOffice’s envelope printing feature in addition to the barcode printing. It’s integration with Address Book and iPhoto is definitely a defining characteristic as well. The only hiccups I ran into were related to printing envelopes correctly. Test on regular sheets of paper the first few times you print envelopes as they may not print facing the same way as they do in the preview. Also be wary of placing a return address too close to the edge of an envelope as a printer’s margins may cut it off partially. Depending on your printer, your mileage may vary. I’m told that version 1.4 (released on Oct. 20th) addresses these printing issues. After taking a long look at this program, I can honestly say that Mail Factory is worth the shareware price. Give it a try and redefine your envelopes and labels.