Postcrossing Blog

Here we go again!

The calendar tells us it’s less than 4 months until World Postcard Day, so it’s time to start preparing for the big day. First things first: the design contest to choose this year’s representative postcard is now officially open!

The theme of 2022's contest is the topic that has inevitably been on everyone’s mind: World Peace. It’s in periods of conflict that we truly understand how important peace is — without it, nothing else is achievable. Postcards can be tiny ambassadors for peace, delivering messages of hope, connecting people across borders and promoting more awareness about the world and its cultures.

We hope this theme inspires many of you to pick up your drawing tools and create something beautiful for this year’s postcard, which will later be shared and sent to all over the world.

Before you do so, please make sure to read the rules carefully. You can submit your designs (in digital form only) until July 15 on the contest page, and we’ll announce the winner until August 15.

And, as usual, there are some prizes! Besides the guaranteed warm fuzzy feeling of having your design be the one to represent the World Postcard Day, we’re also giving away one fantastic Wacom Intuos drawing tablet for the first prize, and a trilogy of Austin Kleon books for the second and third prizes. We’re big fans of Wacom’s versatile drawing tablets, as well as Austin’s pragmatic and inspirational advice for artists (which really applies to everyone). All winners will also receive a Pantone postcard box, to round things up. YAY! 🎉

Even if you’re not brilliant at design, we hope you’ll help us spread the word about the contest and poke your creative friends to participate… especially if they are aspiring artists and could use a little push to put their art out there. 😊 We can’t wait to see how everyone will interpret this year’s theme!

Submissions are now open on the World Postcard Day design contest that we’re running together with our friends at Finepaper, and interested designers can upload their designs! So, if you’re artistically inclined, it’s time to come up with ideas that represent this year’s theme “Across the world on a postcard”, and submit them on the contest page. I’m sure postcrossers know better than anyone the feeling of traveling to another place through a postcard… so it should be an easy task to represent this idea trough an image, right? 😇

And let’s talk prizes! Although only one postcard will be the official postcard of this year’s World Postcard Day, the best three designs will all receive prizes:

Each winner will be awarded a bluetooth Wacom drawing tablet, plus some neat Pantone products as well! These Pantone goodies were kindly sponsored by Tecnimprensa (the company that represents Pantone in Portugal), and I’m sure they’ll come in handy.

You have until the end of July 15^th (UTC) to submit your proposals digitally, and the winners will be announced in mid-August, which should then give everyone plenty of time to download and print the official postcard locally, like last year.

Even if you’re not very artistically inclined, make sure to spread the word about the contest to any talented friends. We are super curious about this year’s designs, and can’t wait to see which postcard will be the official World Postcard Day postcard of 2021! 🎉

… and so it starts again! 😊

We’ve been working behind the scenes on this year’s edition of the World Postcard Day, and today we’d like to announce one of the most exciting parts of it: the graphic design competition to find the official postcard of 2021's events! Last year, we tested by running the contest in Portugal only, together with our friends at Finepaper, a neat printing and design company based in Lisbon. This year, and in the global spirit of postcards, we’re extending the competition to the whole world. So no matter whether you’re a student in Bangladesh, an artist in Argentina, or maybe just someone who really likes drawing, crafts or design — you can participate too!

This year’s theme is “Around the world on a postcard”. The ability to transport us to far away places through the image and words is a really nice characteristic of postcards, and we would like to see this facet featured on this year’s official postcard. How you will choose to make that work is up to you — illustration, photography or some sort of mixed design approach are all valid approaches to the topic. The sky is the limit!

Will there be prizes? You mean, besides worldwide recognition and the immense satisfaction of seeing your design traveling all around the world? 🤪 Naturally! They’ll be announced on the World Postcard Day contest page soon, along with the rules and juries of the contest.

Digital design submissions open later this month, but we are giving postcrossers an early heads-up so you can start working on your proposals. Gather your pencils or fire up Photoshop, and tell your friends to participate too! The contest will run for around 2 months, and results will be published on the World Postcard Day page (and here on the blog) sometime after the deadline closes. We are really looking forward to seeing your creative ideas pour in!

And if, like many of us, you don’t have a lot of creative bones in your body, this is a good time to start making plans and think how you’ll celebrate this year’s event. While we’re busy poking post offices and big postal museums, you can get in touch with your local libraries, museums, schools or other organizations and invite them to commemorate this date as well! Share your ideas with others in the comments below or in this forum topic — now’s the time to start creating some buzz and prepare to make October 1^st the best day in the year!

A few years ago, we accidentally heard about a pub in Bournemouth in the UK auspiciously called “60 Million Postcards” and thought “Wouldn’t that be a great place to throw a party when Postcrossing reaches 60 million postcards?!” And then… you know… The pandemic came and everything changed, naturally. We’re a little sad we can’t fulfill this silly plan, but not all is lost — we can still have our traditional milestone guessing game!

If you weren’t around for one of these before, the idea is simple:

Easy, right? Just place a bet for the minute you think lucky postcard number 60,000,000 will be registered according to your own predictions. Feel free to have a look through Postcrossing’s statistics page if that helps, or maybe crack a fortune cookie (or some eggs?) to come up with a good time slot — anything goes!

And naturally, there will be prizes! The postcrosser whose bet is the closest to the exact minute when postcard number 60 million is registered will win a box set of 100 postcards, and the 6 next best guesses (before or after the registering time) will receive a pack of 20–30 postcards each. 🎉 Hurray!

Some rules: each time slot can only be chosen by one single person, so the first person to pick that slot gets to keep it. You can change it at a later stage if you’d like, but only from the available time slots left. The bets will be automatically closed when there are 1000 postcards left to postcard 60,000,000. Check the contest page for more details.

So, give it your best shot… but be sure to do it soon as good slots are usually taken quickly. Keep sending postcards, and good luck everyone!

Submissions for The Graceful Envelope Contest are once again open, so it’s time to talk about the most beautiful mailart contest out there! :) Just look at some of the beautiful envelopes from last year’s contest:

Aren’t they precious? Last year’s theme was “Put a stamp on it!” and there are links to all the winners and honorable mentions on their page. The theme for this year is “Double vision”:

“The 2020 theme is inspired by the year itself. Only once a century does the year double up! On an envelope, capture something that’s double—whatever you see in your personal Double Vision.”

An interesting theme for sure, and we look forward to seeing the results! Rest assured, you don’t need to be a calligraphy master to participate, as works will be judged not just by the calligraphy or your choice of stamps, but by how you interpret the theme as well as how all of the elements work together to convey your message. Participation by little ones is encouraged, and children have their own categories by age groups.

People from all over the world can participate, as long as they do so until March 23, 2020. So you have less than 2 months to work on this creative project and then mail it in — all the rules are explained on the Washington Calligraphers Guild website.

Good luck, everyone!