Postcrossing Blog

The writing prompts invite postcrossers to write about a different topic on their postcards’ messages every month. These are just suggestions though — if you already know what you want to write about, or the recipient gives you some pointers, that’s great too!

The monthly writing prompts we suggest are often just really fun, like sharing awesome local stuff and imagining what kind of superpowers we’d like… but this month I thought we’d go in a different direction, and share some sage advice!

Advice can be so tricky and situational: I think one of the most life-changing bits of advice I got was from a teacher when it came to picking which university to go to. He told me to visit the campuses, and decide if I felt comfortable there. I refused to even apply to Cambridge on that basis (and admit it, I don’t think I’d have got in anyway), and ended up staking all my hopes on Cardiff University, even deferring entry for a year so I could attend Cardiff specifically. I was very happy and loved my university… and I do tend to use that experience more generally as proof that going with my gut can be a very powerful way to make a tough decision!

For more general advice, my grandma always had some pithy sayings, some of which were more intelligible than others. My favourite to share is this: “You can’t educate pork.” She was never that willing to explain (we’re still not certain about “If you don’t want to fight, wear a really big hat”, though there are theories) but the family have always taken this to be a caution about taking part in arguments that you’ll never win because the other person isn’t listening. I use it to remind myself not to reply to random people on social media…

And finally, I’ll leave you with the advice my dad gave me in a letter, back when I was deciding on which modules to take in my second year of university. He declined to comment on what might be useful to study, and instead told me that if I was ever trapped in a basement or something with only a jar of pickled gherkin, a battery and jump leads, I could put a current through a gherkin to achieve an eerie green light… and hot food.

Make of that what you will, and we’d be excited to learn what great pieces of advice you’ve received, both serious and silly! You can write about it on your postcards this month, and share in the comments as well if you like.

João Machado is an internationally known designer based in Portugal. Although his first love is poster design, he began designing stamps for Portugal’s national postal service in the 1980s. Since then, he has designed dozens of stamps celebrating Portugal’s national culture, ecosystems, industries, and aspirations.

Sometime ago, João very generously shared his time and perspectives with Clarisse (aka CStar9) via email and postal mail.

You are internationally known for your poster designs. How did you begin designing stamps, which are at a very different spatial scale?

I started designing stamps in 1987 at the request of CTT – Correios de Portugal (aka, the Portuguese Post).

I made my first stamp for the centenary of the vinyl record. It was a stamp made manually (drawn and colored) without the help of computers.

What are the primary tools you use in your work?

My first work as a graphic designer was illustrating children’s books. I used pastel and cardboard templates that helped me define the shapes of each drawing. I also drew a lot with India ink.

Later, in the 70s, when posters became my great passion, I drew everything manually, using the airbrush, cutouts, and collages.

In 1987, I bought my first computer, but it was only later, in 1993, that I started using it 100%.

You’ve even designed a stamp on cork! Can you tell us about that?

I designed this stamp on ‘cork paper’ in 2007, at the request of Corticeira Amorim, a company that leads the world in this sector. This is the first stamp made in this material for Correios de Portugal, and the production was backed by Parliament.

Cork is Portugal’s only world-leading industrial sector, and the cork and cork tree are national symbols. The tree – which may live as many as two hundred years – is mainly concentrated in the centre and the south of Portugal.

Your vibrant color palette is incredible! Is it inspired by your environment or does it simply exist in your creative imagination?

There are many subjects, places, sounds, images, and even dreams that have obviously had an impact on my color palette and in my way of being an artist. I have always lived in the North of Portugal, next to the river and the sea. The northern region has always been much richer and more prolific in the colors of its crafts. But in a more general way, I am European and this geographic reality strongly influences my personality.

Influences are inevitable when we live in an open society. I’ve traveled a lot and contact with other international designers has been constant. No doubt I was influenced by the impact of Pop Art: I can highlight the influence of Heinz Edelmann, Milton Glaser, and Seymour Chwast. I remember my early works as an illustrator and poster designer were made during the 1960s, listening to the Beatles.

I ended up creating a very unique chromatic code, with vibrant, clean and sharp colors, articulated without any concern for classical correspondence. For example, green does not always mean hope; black does not always mean mourning. The color of the sun or the sea are those that my imagination and intuition decide to choose.

You’ve said in a previous interview that when you approach a design, you try to land on the bright side of an issue. Can you give us an example?

I am by nature a pessimistic and introspective person, but in my work I am always focused on the positive side of the issue.

In other words, even if it is a delicate and irremediable subject, I always try to approach the content of the message in a positive and hopeful way. Environmental issues are examples of what I have just explained.

When did you first see yourself as an artist/designer?

Since I was very little, I had a tendency to draw. When I was 14 years old and went to high school, I remember that my exercise books were filled with varied comic strips, caricatures of the teachers, and other ideas that occurred to me during lessons. I’m sure that at this age I had already decided my future!

When choosing my university career, I chose Fine Arts, which at the time included painting, sculpture, and architecture. I opted for sculpture due to my passion for the three-dimensional and strong drawing components of the course.

Later on in my work as a designer, the impact of sculpture gave me a better understanding of the three-dimensionality and “sensuality” of forms, not just those of the human figure. But the color was missing!

Graphic design gradually appeared on my path. I made the choice to dedicate myself to it, studying, observing, and creating my own language. Now, I was making my own 'watermark’.

You can learn more about João on his website, or through one of the many documentaries and interviews or profiles he’s been featured on throughout the years.

And now, for a very special giveaway! Clarisse is going to send 3 of João Machado’s cork stamps to 3 randomly selected postcrossers. For a chance to win one of these exceptional specimens, let us know which stamp issue(s) from your country you consider to be the most beautiful — maybe one day, we’ll interview that stamp artist too! 😍 This giveaway will close on Saturday, November 1 November 8.

It’s been a little while, and I’ve been accumulating books I want to talk about here at a high rate, so here are some mini-reviews of interesting books about mail/postal services/etc!

The Postal Paths, by Alan Cleaver

This book is part walking memoir, part history of the daily rounds of posties, with lots of descriptions of the usually idyllic countryside—unsurprisingly, Cleaver chooses rural posties to follow, rather than those in the cities! It isn’t all green fields and hedgerows: he also follows the route through a Welsh mining community, and is shocked by the scars on the landscape.

It’s all a little tilted toward an idealised view of what the work was like, highlighting dedicated posties who loved their work and felt a calling to it, or even felt healed by it. I’m sure there were some who tired of the work, or to whom it was just a job to be got over with, but it’s mild, pleasant reading, and an excellent resource for people interested in tracing the rounds of posties past.

Written in History, by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Here Montefiore has collected a bunch of significant letters, some only significant because of their sender or recipient, rather than subject. The letters are gathered between themes (like love, war, etc), and each one has an introduction contextualising it—sometimes the introduction is longer than the letter itself!

Many of the letters are significant for global political history, while some are more about gaining a personal glimpse of big names. I was a little sad to see the famous complaint letter about Ea-Nasir missed out, and Ankhesanamun’s letter to the Hittite ruler, and… a few other key letters of history that I find significant. Like any such collection, it’s curated according to the interests of the editor.

A Letter from the Lonesome Shore, by Sylvie Cathrall

You might remember my enthusiasm about the first book in this series! The sequel is now out, concluding the duology, and I’d be remiss not to tell you all how much I enjoyed this as well. It wraps up the story and solves most of the mysteries of the first book, and quite honestly, I was not expecting it to take quite the turns it did.

The only thing I’d say is that the mystery maybe built up a little too much. Ultimately, the payoff felt a little bit flat. Still, I gave this a rare 5/5 stars on my blog, so rest assured, the criticism is minimal. Everything I loved about the first book is still here, and be reassured: it’s still epistolary all the way through, despite everything! Cathrall manages that really cleverly.

Please Write, by Lynne M. Kolze

I was actually sent this book to review, and read a proof copy, but it’s taken me forever to get chance to look over the finished version. It’s a lovely warm book, championing handwritten letters and slower, mindful communication. It makes me think a lot about my own experiences writing weekly to my grandmother right up until her death earlier this year, and also the letters I sent to my parents while at university. I’m fairly sure I wrote to my mother more often than I texted her, in my first year or two at university, and Kolze makes a beautiful case for the enduring power of that kind of connection.

This one’ll probably make you glad for all the letters you’ve sent and received, and inspire you to send some more.

A Brief Atlas of the Lighthouses at the End of the World, by González Macías

Just a brief mention for this one, since it’s not really about mail at all, but rather something I read because of our famous first postcard, PT-1. It’s a fun light history that includes weird facts and ghost stories about a collection of far-flung lighthouses all over the world, and I enjoyed it very much.

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And that’s it! I have another book I’d like to review soon—Virginia Evans’ The Correspondent—but that one probably deserves a whole post. It was a surprise hit for me… but I’ll tell you more about that soon.

If you have other books in mind you’d like to see me review on the blog, we have a forum thread for that! If you haven’t used the forum before, you might have to browse a bit to open up that section first. I’d love to see your suggestions there!

The balloons are slowly deflating now, and we’ve swept the confetti off the floor… but what a party World Postcard Day was! 🥰 Every year, we think things can’t possibly go any better, and every year the community proves us wrong. Now that the postcards sent on October 1st are starting to make their way around the globe, it’s time for a little recap of all the fun and magic.

The forum topic was buzzing with excitement from the very first time zone to the last. As midnight rolled across the world, celebrations began popping up like a beautiful stadium wave — from Asia to the Americas, one after another! Postcrossers shared photos, stories, and stacks of postcards ready to fly off to new destinations. The energy was infectious, and it even spilled over onto social media, where #WorldPostcardDay was full of smiling faces, mailboxes, and beautiful cards.

Over in the Postcard Lounge, things were just as lively: 410 of you joined us throughout the day to write postcards with some company! At one point, over 40 people were online simultaneously, quietly writing postcards together. We saw participants from Chile to New Zealand, and a few even recognized familiar names of people they’d once exchanged postcards with. It turned into a wonderfully long, cozy session of shared scribbling and postcard showing. A big thank you to everyone who volunteered to help host it — we’ll definitely have to do it again!

Meanwhile, 163 meetups took place all over the world, bringing postcard friends together in real life. Many meetups also happened via Geocaching, and a handful of libraries joined as well!

The official World Postcard Day design was everywhere, printed by postcrossers individually or in huge group orders. What a joy to see it travel! And we also saw many other postcards celebrating the day, including these beautiful handmade postcards that kara_ann's mom, Kris, sewed just for the occasion!

Also 2025 was the year in which we broke all records: over 117,000 postcards were sent on October 1st across all time zones! 😱 It’s a bit mind-boggling and, for us who have to manage the system — and a bit worrying too, as Postcrossing wasn’t built for such huge peaks of activity as there’s a limited amount of addresses that can be select at any given time. We’ll need to brainstorm some solutions for next year, which will (sadly) likely include lowering the limits on the day… but for now, we’re just amazed and grateful for everyone’s enthusiasm.

And speaking of gratitude, today is World Post Day — which marks the anniversary of the founding of the Universal Postal Union back in 1874. This year’s theme, “#PostForPeople: Local Service. Global Reach.”, celebrates postal services as a vital public service rooted in communities and driven by people. From rural villages to bustling cities, the postal infrastructure everywhere keeps us connected — often serving as a bridge to the wider world, and sometimes even to the digital one. We’re proud that postcards are a small but meaningful part of that mission, helping build connections that go beyond borders and bring a bit of happiness into the world. So here’s to postal workers everywhere (and to all of you!) for keeping this beautiful network alive, one postcard at a time!

It’s no secret that October 1st is our favorite date on the calendar: the day we come together to celebrate postcards, the little rectangles of paper that have been connecting people and carrying happiness across the globe for 156 years.

If you pause for a moment, you might imagine today’s postal network humming with extra excitement! Sorting machines whirring a little faster, postboxes filling up with colorful postcards, and mail carriers unknowingly carrying a bit of extra joy in their bags. Somewhere, someone is carefully choosing the best postcard, the nicest stamps, and the kindest words to brighten another person’s day. 🥰

So today, wherever you are, we invite you to take part in this big wave of connection. Write a postcard to a fellow postcrosser, but also think of your neighbors, friends, family (young and old), teachers, co-workers, or someone who could use a smile. Let’s make mailboxes everywhere burst with cheer!

If you need a little boost of energy for the task, we recommend the official fuel of World Postcard Day: ravioli (because they look like postage stamps) and stamp-shaped cookies for dessert. 😋

And of course, don’t forget to share your celebrations with us! You can join the Postcard Lounge at any time today to write postcards alongside others around the world or post your photos on the forum or on social media with the hashtag #WorldPostcardDay — we’ll be watching and sharing throughout the day.

Happy World Postcard Day, everyone! 🥳 May your pens flow smoothly, your mailboxes overflow, and your heart be a little happier knowing that you’re part of a global movement that spreads happiness, one postcard at a time.