Postcrossing Blog

Although quite small, the space on the back of a postcard can often seem intimidating, and some postcrossers struggle with what to write there… To help with this, here are 20 different ideas to fill your postcards! :)

1. Express what daily life is like where you’re sending the card from by describing what you did today, your routine, etc.
2. Write 5 curious facts about the place where the card is from.
3. Give local travelling tips from your area! What are the must-sees around you?
4. Include your favourite quote, perhaps in its original language (with translation!)
5. What was the last thing you cooked or ate? Include a recipe!
6. What do you have in common with the recipient of your card?
7. Recount a childhood memory, or something you’ve learned from your grandparents.
8. What makes you happy? If it makes you smile, there’s a good chance others will like to hear about it.
9. Share a local idiom or saying, in its original language, with translation of course!
10. Did you ever travel to the place where your card is going? Recall your best memory of that place.
11. What’s the weather like as you are writing your postcard? Draw the weather forecast in detail!

12. Share an interesting fact that you’ve learned, and which most people are not aware of.
13. Got an unusual hobby or collection? Do tell!
14. Did anything important happen in your country lately? Share an interesting news bit!
15. Tell the recipient about your favourite book, movie or band!
16. Draw a picture of your surroundings, or your favourite object in that room!
17. Write your favorite poem or…
18. …make up your own poem – acrostic poems or haikus are short and enjoyable to write!
19. What are the local festivals or traditions from your area?
20. If you’re a student, what are you studying? What was the last thing you learned in school?

We hope that helps inspire some of you! Got some other tips? Please share them below!

Photo by Dancing Lemur, on Flickr.

Back in 2005, when Postcrossing was about to be launched, a logo wasn’t on top of our priorities… To tell the truth, we just wanted to get it done so that we could open the website, invite our friends to join, and get some postcards going! :) So we quickly drafted something on an image editor with our meager design skills, and moved on to more important things: actually sending some postcards and testing the website.

Of course, this was a time at which we couldn’t imagine the project would ever grow so big… so when people outside of our circle of friends started joining, and the media picked up on it, they caught us unprepared… As time passed, our priorities quickly shifted to solving problems and keeping the website running.

But over the years, we felt the need for something a bit more professional, something that would implicitly show the essence of the project… and something that we could brag about too! And so last year, we enlisted the help of our friend and designer Maria Nogueira, with the mission to create a fresh new logo for Postcrossing. She tinkered with many ideas for some months, being ever patient with our hesitation and obsessive adjustments… And now, we’re pleased to share with you the result from this collaboration:

We love the new logo, and feel that it really says something about the project! We hope you like it too. Let us know what you think in the comments below!

Update: Hi guys! Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment and letting us know what you think – we do appreciate all the feedback, and it’s nice to see that you care and feel passionate about the project. We are listening and taking notes.
We think it’s too soon to judge whether or not the logo is good. Let’s give it some time, and a fair chance to sink in, to see how it works.

Some time ago, Pebbles84 sent us this suggestion for a blog post:

“How about an overview of how country distribution has changed over the years? I’m a member for over 2 years, and it seems things have changed quite a lot. It would be nice to see in which countries Postcrossing has grown a lot, and how the amount of members has changed.”

If you’ve been a member for a long time, you probably have noticed that Postcrossing’s popularity in certain countries changes over time. Sometimes, a news report or a blurb on a popular website will catapult the project to stardom, raising the number of signups in that city or country.

Members that have been here since the beginning might remember a time when every other card seemed to be traveling to Portugal, Brazil or Finland, or how rare Asian countries once were. These days, there are definitely more users from Russia or Taiwan on the site – countries come and go in waves.

Being data geeks, we were curious to see what the member distribution looked like plotted in a graph, and so we crunched some numbers and did the math.

You can explore the results on the interactive chart below:

Isn’t it interesting? You can see when Postcrossing started to become popular in some countries, or how others have lost their prominent rank. Also, the “Other” category is growing, meaning that the pool of countries is becoming increasingly diverse.

Keep in mind however, that the countries that have the most users are not always the ones that send more postcards! If you’re curious, you can check out the current number of members per country and postcards sent per country on our Explore Countries page!

Some time ago, we were contacted by Wanting Luo (Celery0625), a student from the University of Cincinnati who was using Postcrossing as a theme for a design projects. His idea was to create a infographic which would show the project’s evolution throughout the years.

The result is the lovely graphic above. It features a lot of facts about Postcrossing, including our growth curve, most important milestones, which countries have been more heavily represented throughout the years, and a lot of other interesting details. Have a look and let us know what you think!

PS – This is a big image, so depending on your screen, you might have to scroll the window sideways and vertically to see it.

On the last post, we mentioned the new stamp from the Dutch postal service featuring Postcrossing, which was launched this past Saturday on the Postex event.

Paulo gave a short presentation about the project, and received the first sheet of stamps from the hands of Berend Dorgelo, from PostNL.

Designer Garech Stone, from the Stone Twins, also gave the audience some insights about the design process, and shared some “easter eggs” hidden in the stamps! For instance, can you find the suited monkey with a gun? :)

As part of the stamp launch, PostNL is organising a contest where Dutch postcrossers can win a travel voucher of 500 euros, if they use the stamps on their Postcrossing cards. To participate, have a look at the contest page.

Once again, our heartfelt thank you to PostNL, Raymond68 and all the people who were involved in the process of making this dream come true!

This was a big step in our postcard revolution, and we look forward to collaborating with other postal services in the future! :)