Snail Mail My Email

Of course, we all know that email is impersonal, lacking creativity and quite devoid of any significant effort on the part of the sender...

Ivan Cash, Artist, Designer, Art Director has created a nice twist on this with his Snail Mail My Email art project.

"Snail Mail My Email is a month-long (July 15 - August 15), interactive community art project which seeks to both share the warm-fuzzy feeling of receiving a personalized letter as well as inspire people to send their own snail mail. Anyone with internet access can partake by simply sending an email, after which the very same message will be handwritten and physically mailed to the chosen recipient anywhere in the world, completely free of charge.

In a culture overrun with instant gratification and on-demand services, this project cultivates appreciation for the lost art of letter writing."

Examples:

Much as we love art... We love the idea of sending snail mail cards with personally handwritten sentiments even more. Especially those sent from Cool Cards.

Source: Snail Mail My Email

Source: Flickr

And the Cool Cards Harrogate 2011 Cute Card Award goes to...

These beauties...

Not, as yet, available from Cool Cards - but never say never... ;)

Harrogate Home and Gift - 2011

Cool Cards were at the Harrogate Home and Gift Trade Show today searching for new greeting card ideas for you. Did we find any? Yes we did..! And here are a few of our favourites... 

You'll soon find some of these, and more, at Cool Cards.

So, in no particular order... enjoy.

First up. Building on her success at many design-led trade shows, the enchanting and understated London based Graphic Designer Roisin Cafferty bravely made the long journey Up North and quite caught our attention with her stripped down, super cute, back to basics, less-is-more style of cards which confidently stood out amid the wash of the many samey, "Yorkshire" cards at Harrogate this year. We couldn't quite decide if they're right for Cool Cards though... What do you think?

 

Next up. We also fell in love with Velvet Olive years ago... but never took the plunge.

The delightful Kathryn Fletcher continues to expand her designs which we enjoyed catching up with at Harrogate. Supremely classy, timeless and yet contemporary designs, wonderfully finished - but with a RRP of £3.25 are they a bit too much for Cool Cards..? The cards are finished to such a high standard it's impossible to fully appreciate them with a website image. Can we do them justice?

This is a small sample of just one Velvet Olive design range which caught the apple of our eye/s. Clean, clear, classy.
Seriously, they don't do any justice to these stunningly beautiful cards.

"Back to Black
Cream textured board, print finished with beautiful black thermography, a technique which gives a raised and glossy impression, also hand finished with Austrian cream pearls."

But before you decide... Some important stuff you should know about Velvet Olive.

"She detests washing up but loves hoovering.
When designing, she very rarely moves from one spot for hours at a time, then eats 10 slices of toast and galleons of tea in one hit.
She loves typography and unusual types of board and paper.
Furniture, she can spend hours in a junk shop, buy nothing she needs, and then her poor house is filled to the rafters with her odd finds.
Architecture, she loves, loves, loves beautiful and interesting buildings, old or new. 

She hates bananas."

What more could you need to know?

Moving on... These next cards are quite simply a must-have, no-brainer addition to Cool Cards. You'll be seeing these soon. We used to have a Fair Trade shop and the lack of ethical, Fair Trade greeting cards on Cool Cards has always been a great source of shame for us... But, today we found these beauties at the Shared Earth stand: FairMail Fair Trade cards.

This is why we like them...

"FairMail is a company producing fair trade greeting cards in Peru and India and is a member of the World Fair Trade Organisation."

The card images, to be fair (...sorry) aren't all that strong. But that's not the point. It's the Fair Trade back-story that's important to us.

What's the back-story? "The photos on FairMail cards are taken by underpriviliged Indian and Peruvian teenagers. FairMail offers them photography training, part-time work, medical insurance and guidance in making their future plans."

"The teenagers get 50 % of the profits of the sale of their own cards to finance their housing and education."

We like that a lot. And we want more, more..!

Not shown here, but the back of each card shows an image of the person who will benefit from the sale of each card and information about them.

See more FairMail...

More?  Youtube FairMail Channel  (Mostly Dutch - the birthplace of the Fair Trade movement)

More more? Greedy guts. Search YouTube and Google for Fair Trade.

More cards? Oh, ok...

Susan Entwistle

We haven't had many Art Cards for a while, but these caught our attention... Any thoughts?

" Susan Entwistle, an artist with a textile design background, paints gardens from her visits around the country, using a contemporary, pointillist style in layers of coloured dots. She undertakes commissions for both public and private gardens as well as landscapes and florals."

Had a super day at Harrogate. So nice to meet existing Cool Cards publishers and some new ones too, but that's all for now (It's getting late and it's time for some FIBS backgammon to nicely round the day off) - more soon.

Those links again...

Super Cute Roisin Cafferty cards

Super Classy Velvet Olive cards (trade only damn her to super hell)

Super Fair FairMail Fair Trade cards

Super Art Susan Entwistle cards

Couldn't make the show? See for yourself... Harrogate Home & Gift Exhibitor list

R.I.P. Banksy Gorilla

"A BANKSY mural on a former social club in Eastville has been painted over.

The Gorilla in a Pink Mask mural, depicting an ape with a pink eye mask over its face, has been a familiar sight on Fishponds Road for more than 10 years."

"But the stencil was whitewashed over when the building was turned into a Muslim cultural centre. It could prove to be an expensive mistake – an 8ft mural on a hotel in Torquay is claimed to have raised the value of the building by £150,000.

Saeed Ahmed, owner of the cultural centre, said he had never heard of the famous artist and painted over the gorilla because he thought it was a regular piece of graffiti.

Mr Ahmed said: "I thought it was worthless. I didn't it know it was valuable. That's why I painted over it. I really am sorry if people are upset."

A paintings conservator, Richard Pelter of Park Street-based International Fine Art Conservation Studios, was last night attempting to remove the whitewash using large cotton buds and sensitive cleaning materials.

Neighbour Dean Meadows said: "It's a shame. It's currently being shared around the world on Twitter, so hopefully Banksy will hear and replace it himself."

"I thought it was worthless. I didn't it know it was valuable. That's why I painted over it. I really am sorry if people are upset."

Yeah right. Mr Ahmed, no offence, but Jesus H Christ that seems somewhat unlikely...

Get your memorial Banksy Gorilla Mask cards quick sharp from Cool Cards before Mr Ahmed comes round and Tip-Ex's them.

Source: This is Bristol

Source: Banksy Cards

Royal Mail... Junk Mail, Scam Mail, Stupid Mail... And Why? Profit.

Why Hate Junk Mail? BBC Panorama, the world's longest running investigative TV show, looks into the junk that pours through your doors every day... 

A somewhat lightweight Panorama 'investigation' and many many years too late we'd say, but better late than never...

"It invades our homes, dropping onto our doormats in its millions and costs the taxpayer a fortune to get rid of. It might be a menace in our mailbox but without junk mail, would our postal service survive? Panorama reporter Tom Heap asks whether junk mail is only good for one thing, burning it to heat his home, and investigates whether Royal Mail is addicted to the darker side of the letters business - scam mail."

Aside from the huge waste of limited resources and energy in sending such stupid mail, how upsetting must it be to receive unsolicited mail addressed to your ex or your recently deceased?

What the Panorama documentary fails to tell you is that you can very easily opt out of receiving junk and scam mail in the UK.

"The Mailing Preference Service (MPS) is a free service set up 20 years ago and funded by the direct mail industry to enable consumers to have their names and home addresses in the UK removed from lists used by the industry. It is actively supported by the Royal Mail and all directly involved trade associations and fully supported by The Information Commissioners Office.

The MPS Consumer File is a list of names and addresses of consumers who have told us they wish to limit the amount of direct mail they receive. The use of the Consumer File by list-owners and users is a requirement of the British Code of Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing administered by the Advertising Standards Authority. It is also a condition under the Code of Practice of the Direct Marketing Association."

Source: Mailing Preference Service

And similarly, junk phone calls too:  Telephone Preference Service

Source: Panorama - Why Hate Junk Mail?

Design: No Comment

Unpick to open - Snail Mail 10, Email 0

"Unpick to open" is the title of a simply amazing post from The Missive Maven.

USA based Missive Maven received a letter from England. 

Not your average letter mind you... An entirely embroidered letter from an unnamed, hugely talented, seamstress.

Long live beautiful and artistic snail mail..!

More images, more words: The Missive Maven

Design: Bookmark - Haunted Mansion

Print your own Haunted Mansion bookmark and include it with your Cool Card as a simple and special gift.

"Instructions:

1. Print out the bookmark and the bookmark holder on regular paper or cardstock and cut out the pieces, including the "window" on the front of the bookmark holder. Do not cut along the fold lines.
2. Fold the bookmark holder in half along the fold line so the illustration is on the outside. Fold the tabs on the sides inward. Spread glue over the tabs and glue them to the inside of the back of the holder. You should now have a pouch with an opening at the top.
3. Fold the bookmark at the half way line so the illustrations are on the front and the back of the bookmark. Glue the backs together. Punch a hole at the top of the bookmark and tie a string or ribbon through the hole. Now you can slide your bookmark out of the holder to reveal the grim fates of the Portraits."

Source:  Disney Printable: Haunted Mansion Portrait Chamber Bookmark

PDF image of bookmark.

Design: Dear Photograph - Then & Now

Photographs preserve a moment in time, memories and events.
"Dear Photograph" provides a delightful twist.

"Dear Photograph is a photo blog with a simple premise: old snapshots are brought back to the site where they were originally taken and are photographed in the present day. The result is a fascinating then and now photograph."

Add yours at Dear Photograph

View more and contribute: Dear Photograph 

Via: Laughing Squid

We blogged a similar idea back in 2009...
"Chino Otsuka inserts modern photos of herself as an adult into photos of herself as a child."

Rocket Mail

Just a quick big up to Cool Cards before we get started...

"A quick word to thanks for your stunningly good service in supplying a card I ordered yesterday afternoon. Within a few minutes I received your acknowledgement, within a few more I received a message to say it had been shipped. (I took the latter with a pinch of salt!) And yet the postman handed me my order this morning at 8.30, well packed in a card-backed envelope. Wow! Even in these days when we all appear to expect everything yesterday (and end up being disappointed), this is very impressive indeed. You must have had someone waiting at the computer, someone else holding open the envelope, and the engine kept running outside, with an escorted drive to the post office! Whatever - I'm delighted, not least by the unusual card, which fits the bill very well. Many thanks, we will certainly add your site to our 'favourites' for future reference. Regards,
Andrew"

Order from Cool Cards before 4.30pm and there's every chance that your UK mainland order will be on your doorstep the following morning. Thanks to the fantastic service of Royal Mail. But it's not rocket science. Or was it?

Get this. Purpose built rocket mail delivery was first sent between two Austrian villages in 1931.

"Friedrich Schmiedl launched the first rocket mail with 102 pieces of mail between Schöckl and St. Radegund, Austria. Schmiedl also launched rockets on 21 April 1931 from the Austrian town of Schöckl to Kaite Rinne with mail and a spectrograph. After the April flight, 79 specially printed postcards marked in German with "Flown in Instrument Rocket" bear stamps from the flights.

Gerhard Zucker experimented in the 1930s with powder rockets similar to fireworks. Between 1931 and 1933, he travelled throughout Germany displaying his rocket and claiming that it could be used to deliver mail.

After moving to the United Kingdom, Zucker attempted to convince the General Post Office that postal delivery by rocket was viable. After initial demonstrations on the Sussex Downs in southern England, rockets were launched on 28 and 31 July 1934 over a 1600-metre flight path between the Hebridean islands of Harris and Scarp in Scotland. Around 1.07 m long with a diameter of 18 cm, the fuselage was packed with 1,200 envelopes. Unfortunately for Zucker both rockets exploded, though most of the smaller second cargo, which included survivors of the first, was saved.

IMDB: The Rocket Post

Stephen Smith, a Secretary of the Indian Airmail Society, combined his work with his interest in rocketry. His first launch was on 30 September 1934, and he experimented with 270 more by 4 December 1944. 80 of these contained mail, and his achievements include the first successful rocket mail sent over a river and the first rocket to carry a parcel. The Oriental Fireworks Company supplied Smith with 16 rockets between 23 March 1935 and 29 June 1935. Between them, these "Silver Jubilee" flights carried over a thousand covers.

In 1992 the Indian government issued a stamp to celebrate the centenary of Smith's birth, calling him "the originator of rocket mail in India".

Then, 28 years after Schmiedl, the Americans got in on the act... and as always have to go that one bit bigger... with a nuclear missile (Hotmail anyone?).

"An American attempt in 1959, was something entirely new, because the mail was not packed in rockets built for the purpose but stowed in mail containers that replaced a nuclear warhead on top of a missile built for war. Because this was strictly an experiment, the mail consisted entirely of commemorative postal covers addressed to a host of government officials, including President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The missile was fired shortly before noon from a launcher aboard the submarine USS Barbero, cruising off the coast of Virginia. Twenty-two minutes after launch, the missile struck its target at the Naval Auxiliary Air Station in Mayport, Florida.

The mail was retrieved, sorted and routed in the usual way from a post office in nearby Jacksonville."

The SSM-N-8 Regulus cruise missile was used for one attempt to deliver mail.

Sources:

Astronautix: Friedrich Schmiedl

Wiki: Gerhard Zucker

Wiki: Stephen Hector Taylor-Smith

Wiki: Rocket mail

Wired: This day in Tech

IMDB: The Rocket Post
Stamps of King George V Silver Jubilee: Indian Rocket Mail