BY KATIE MULDOON

You’d never know that mail volume is down from looking at my overflowing mailbox, which can be packed with more than 20 catalogs a day. There’s just no way I can leisurely peruse a catalog anymore, as the sheer number of books I receive creates pressure to get through them quickly just to get back the use of my kitchen table.

The good news in recent years was that these unwieldy stacks would be filled with marvelous ideas.

Not this time.

OK, there were some, but they were few and far between. Of 93 covers reviewed over a somewhat light two-week period, 30% were old-fashioned multiproduct presentations, 28% were old-fashioned single-product presentations and 27% had pictures of people. Only two came in an envelope, another two featured mostly copy on the cover and a couple took a humorous approach. Just eight chose a contemporary single-product treatment. Since there were so many traditional photos, most of the catalogs were in boring brown tones. Sure, there were a few white, red and cobalt blues, but only two catalogs really stood out from the pack color-wise.

A real surprise was that less than half (38%) had a promotion of any kind. Fourteen offered discounts and 11 dangled free gifts, free shipping, buy-one/get-one promos, or shipping upgrades. Considering the overheated retail promotions environment, things were pretty quiet.

From my perspective, the best catalog cover award goes to Athleta, which showed an athlete in motion, graceful and appealing, and to Orvis, with its new puppies-in-a-row cover. The Museum of Modern Art had the snazziest single product presentation: You have no idea what it is but you want to find out—and that gets you to open the catalog. Lizell deserves an award for being the only catalog that seems to remember America is still at war. Its subtle patriotic cover was beautiful enough to frame, yet it still sold product.

As more of us are dumping our order forms to save money, it was reassuring to see that only 43% of those catalogs reviewed had bind-in order blanks. The unscientific observation is that the catalogs sent to older audiences and the newer catalogs tended to retain the bind-ins.

Now on to the "What Were They Thinking?" awards: Lizell, for using props that couldn’t be purchased. Prominently displayed on a work space were many leather-bound New York Times Book Review binders. A desperate search through the catalog got me to look through the whole book (maybe that was the devious plan) but left me frustrated and angry at the cataloger for not making the binders available or even noting where they could be found on the Web.

* Many catalogs, for way too many blow-ins that immediately got in the way of a fanciful catalog read. OK, extra income is good. But try to remember your customer’s state of mind, too. * Critics’ Choice Video, for the longest—and without a doubt most uninviting—letter of the season. Forty super-wide, hard-to-read lines of dense type breaks every direct mail rule in anybody’s book.

* Title 9 Sports, for the worst graphic design for a letter. Try reading drop-out type with super-deep leading. Then add a complicated background. Wasted space. * Domestications, for not revealing it has Spanish-speaking sales reps until well into the catalog. Doesn’t it make sense that a person who wishes or needs to order in Spanish ought to know this before they open the book? We vote for a back-cover notice.

* City Spirit, which talks the talk ("It’s not about looking young, it’s about looking great") but doesn’t walk the walk (if the featured model is over 20, lead me to her surgeon).

* Ross-Simons, for teasing us with a really fresh new cover, then dropping us like a rock once we turn the page. The new cover manages, with engaging photography, to make the screaming invitation "Splurge" seem warm and friendly, then gives us the same old inside layouts that look as if they’ve been around forever.

Moving along to my "There Are Still Some Good Ideas Out There" awards:

* Athleta, which drops a tiny, very comprehensive chart into its body copy. Each chart succinctly describes color, size, style number and cost.

* TravelSmith, for its explanatory inserts. One uses a ruler to show exactly how many inches jeans take up when packed compared with its Explorer pants.

* The Gallery Collection, which displays, on the outer envelope, 30 or so pretty impressive companies that buy from its catalog—and asks readers to join this family of prestigious customers.

*White Flower Farm, which solves the connect-the-copy-to-the-product problem with the words "Facing Page" in brackets under the copy-block heading.

It’s time we all took another look at what benefit our catalogs are providing consumers at a time when competition comes in many more forms than just other catalogs. In a recent Time magazine essay, Walter Kirn discussed the need, in these scary days, for changing the rules so that we can all think about something besides bad stuff.

Maybe what we need to see is a really extreme fix. Perhaps some company should do a catalog of screen shots from the Web…or print its cover upside-down as an April Fool’s joke…or have all the prices in rubles (with translation)…or paginate by price…or put candy Valentine hearts in every outgoing package…or some such thing!

Come on—let’s see some wake-up ideas!