Postcrossing Blog

Early today we’ve reached 13 million postcards! Congratulations everyone! They seem to be coming faster and faster these days! :)

We’d like to feature a couple of designers who are also postcrossers, and have used their talents to create postcards especially for the project.

We discovered Alex’s (aka Shurkala) postcards by accident, but were immediately in awe of his skills! Alex told us that the postcards were born of an experiment with typography and combining digital vector drawing with watercolor. He’s very happy with the results, and started printing and selling his postcards on Shurkenberg, his Etsy shop.

The second designer, Femke (aka Mevrouwtjetheelepel) is a product designer from the Netherlands. Her mother, sister and aunts are also very active postcrossers so she created the 'Holland’ postcard for them to send it to other postcrossers around the world. It’s a beautiful card, filled with all kinds of things which we associate with The Netherlands:

We spent a good deal of time going through all the items, laughing at the unexpected ones :) You can check out this and other postcards made by Femke on her site (Dutch).

When I discovered Singaporean Art director Alynn Teo’s postcards, I was suddenly… hungry! Food-related postcards are my weakness – I can’t seem to resist them! (plus, she has a pack featuring just eggs…)

Everyday at 3pm, Alynn takes a little break from her freelancing projects to have a snack, which she photographs prior to eating. She has been doing this little ritual since 2009, and in November 2010, she decided to turn it into a business, by printing her own stationery line and selling it on her Etsy shop, one little journey. The result is a series of minimalist yet mouth-watering postcards.

Below are her answers to our interview about her stationery line.

How did you get started doing stationery design?

Artistry is the main motivating factor. I got hooked onto designing daily use items such as jewellery, toys and stationery since young. It is mostly a pastime kind of affair in between projects from my main line. While browsing Etsy mid last year, I started serious planning in turning my pastime hobby into real business.

Where do you find your inspiration?

Everywhere! Travel, day dreams, everyday objects, tea & coffee, my daily 3 p.m. breaks. I believe things that we see, love, experience are nested somewhere in our subconscious and they surface at the least expected moments to inspire us.

If you could define your style in 3 words, what would they be?

The Simple Things

Are you a letter (or postcard) writer yourself?

Yes, absolutely! And love designing them too. i think it is one of the most sincere way of showing your love for someone.

Can you show us a picture of your studio or workspace?

You can find Alynn’s postcards at etsy.com/shop/onelittlejourney.

We’ve discovered Irwin Terry’s wonderful blog by accident, but were instantly captivated by his passion and dedication to illustrator Edward Gorey. As his works are featured in so many postcards, we invited Irwin to write a post about this famous American artist. :) So tell us Irwin, who was Edward Gorey?

Edward Gorey (1925 – 2000) was an American illustrator, writer and humorist who lived in New York City and Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Mr. Gorey wrote and illustrated over 100 books, illustrated hundreds of books for other authors, provided the animation for Mystery! on PBS, and won a Tony Award for the 1979 Broadway production of Dracula. He was also a postcard aficionado, promoter, and a postcard collector. From an early age, Mr. Gorey created and sent interesting correspondence to friends and family, much of which was embellished by hand.

In 1976 he created his first set of postcard images titled The Broken Spoke which appeared in Sports Illustrated and was also published in book form. He went on to create and publish sets of postcards with themes ranging from Neglected Murderesses to Scene de Ballet. From 1984 to 1996, Mr. Gorey created a special annual post card for National Post Card Week. When designing postcards, Edward Gorey took the nom de plume of Dogear Wyrde, one of the many anagram names he created.

Due to his signature style of drawing and amusing images, many of his illustrations have been used as postcard images. Today, the best place to find/purchase Edward Gorey – illustrated postcards is The Edward Gorey House museum in Yarmouthport, MA. The gift shop at the museum sells over 50 different postcard images as well as books of postcards created by Mr. Gorey.

For more information on Mr. Gorey, his postcard images and his work, you can visit my Edward Gorey collecting blog.

If you have ever seen an Anne Taintor postcard, mug, or greeting card, you would know. Her website tagline is, “Making Smart People Smile Since 1985”. Taintor takes classic photographs and old-fashioned drawings and adds clever words to them, in a newsprint style. For example, her very first piece used an old picture from a National Geographic magazine photo. The photo shows a businessman type wearing a pressed collared shirt, shorts and dress socks. He is with two women in classy dresses and they are standing on a balcony overlooking some exotic location. She clipped out the newsprint worlds, “intellectuals gone bad.” It was funny and offbeat and spawned many more creations.

How did Anne come up with her kooky collages? According to her website, it was 1985 and Taintor had suddenly gone from a stay-at-home mom to being the sole breadwinner of her household. She needed to make money – and fast. She went to a career counselor, where she was asked what skills she had. Her response? “I can make collages.”

She started from there, cutting out magazine photos and making collages. She clipped the words and added them, poking fun at society and gender roles. She even started typing her own words instead of simply cutting them from magazines! She was told to give up many times, but Anne persevered. Her style is defined by clever and witty observations of images from the past that many people would simply have taken at face value, but she turns the image on its side and points out the hilarity of the situation!

Today, Taintor is well-known and her many classic creations make people chuckle all over the world. You can find more of her work on Amazon.com, as well as in gift shops and greeting card stores everywhere.

Last week, our friend Iris sent us the link to the videoclip below, which brought a big smile to our faces. The song is a little balad called 'I won’t give up’, by Jason Mraz.

The tunes are nice, but what really caught our attention was the amount of stationery displayed in this clip! It’s full of old-school envelopes, stamps, cancelation marks and postcards!

Doesn’t it make you want to write someone a love letter? What are you waiting for? :)

PS – German and/or Chinese users can see the video here or here.