Viva Snail Mail!

This one goes out to Dari of Papi’s Mami and her bad ass, roller derby self.

Beautiful, hand printed cards from Tall Cow.com. Check them out.

Its the last day of April. Have you sent out a letter or card? Or a poem about spring or taxes? If you have, I adore you. And if not, well, you’re in luck! It turns out that National Card and Letter Writing Month extends to Mother’s Day so its actually National Card and Letter Writing Month and nine days. Here’s the card I found for my mother. Mom, if you’re reading, sorry for the spoiler. Oh look. Its actually an Easter card. Perfect.

These notecards are beautiful! The cards themselves are the size of actual polaroid 600’s and the images are gorgeous. 

20 different photos in a box set, curated by Jenifer Altman and published by Chronicle Books. 

A week and a half ’til Valentine’s Day. Another valentine giving strategy is to buy some vintage valentines or, if you are a paper saver like me, raid your own childhood collection. Scan ‘em and print ‘em and send ‘em. I found these valentines at the Brooklyn Flea, which has taken up winter weekend residence in the most incredibly beautiful space, the former Williamsburg Savings Bank. The lovely woman selling valentines had her wares displayed on the marble table where many a Brooklyn resident used to fill out their deposit slips under a cathedral ceiling of mosaic and stone. Maybe you should go pay her a visit this weekend…

OK, it doesn’t have a direct connection to snail mail, beyond the ideal medium of paper, and I haven’t been to the show yet but I am still going to encourage you to go to the Museum of Arts and Design at Columbus Circle in Manhattan to see Slash: Paper Under the Knife. You just might be inspired by the range of ways that artists use paper and then take some of those ideas and make an amazing series of handmade paper cards and then send them to your friends who have forgotten the pleasures of receiving real, honest to goodness paper mail and then, comrades, you would make their friggin’ day!

In short, Viva Snail Mail!

Viva Snail Mail: I love this card. What inspired you to design it?

Jamie: When I decided I wanted to make greeting cards—which I’ll come to later—I decided I’d needed some photo references so I wandered the town taking pictures. After going through the shots I stopped on the payphone and mailbox and started thinking about how much more obsolete they have become since the advent of cell phones, email, texting, online bill pay, etc. While they both work as clever ideas, the mailbox in particular has a sentimental quality to it. 

As I tried to think of the greeting I wondered if we’d get to/have gotten to a time when younger generations hardly use mail or mailboxes. As they’d have no sentimental attachment to it and, let’s face it, fewer and fewer needs that require its use, they could go a long while never stepping up to a mailbox. Would their be a day when its use and purpose is unrecognizable? This thinking led to the “What is this thing?” line, as a comment on that possibility.

VSM: Why do you make greeting cards?

Jamie: Designing greeting cards solves 2 issues for me. 

First, I’m a print designer by trade and I love print, love design you can hold in your hand. It may never disappear completely but there’s a definite shift. Designers typically do as much or more online and interactive design as print design. Faced with this shift in my work, I see designing greeting cards as a way to hold onto my true design passion. I find I’m seeking that a lot. 

Second, like a lot of things these days there’s very little romance, style or grace left to corresponding with each other. Digital correspondence is mostly devoid of heart and soul. That’s not to say I don’t use it, I do. But when it comes to a real expression of anything, emails, texts and instant messages lack pretty much everything. They even confuse some things. I think the greeting card remains one of the best ways to correspond in an every day fashion. I wanted to be a part of that.

VSM: Besides sending out products from your etsy shop, what’s the most recent paper mail that you have you sent and received?

Jamie: As a card designer I tend to send out a lot of cards. When I do something new I like to send it out to a friend or family member. It feels more genuine as a designer, if I use my own designs from time to time. 

I think the last piece of mail I sent out – that wasn’t a bill – was a card-o-rama for my mom as her birthday falls close to Mother’s Day.

The last piece I received was a wedding invitation from my friend in London. She’s having an authentic country wedding. The invitation was engraved, black wedding script on a white card. No ribbons, no foil, no iconography, just a proper English invitation. 

VSM: Thanks Jamie. Viva Snail Mail!

Jamie’s work can be seen at:

http://jamielatendresse.com/

www.jamielatendresse.etsy.com

To kick off Viva Snail Mail’s profiles of cardmakers, I thought I would pick Albertine Press, a design and letterpress print shop from my hometown of Somerville, Massachusetts. I asked Albertine boss, Shelley Barandes, a few questions. 

The best paper I’ve received is a package of letterpress prints, part of a print exchange I participated in. It was such a delightful treat to open it up and discover all of the creative prints that each of the other studios produced.

VSM: Thanks Shelley. Your work is lovely. Viva Snail Mail!