Paperless Post Review

Full disclosure: this is a sponsored post. I have been a customer of Paperless post for many years and was happy to accept this opportunity because I already love the product, and their cards feature some beautiful artwork.

Paperless Post is a digital greeting card service. As a resident of Japan with family in the United States, it's a great way to send a last-minute greeting with a lot more personality than an email. I know my card will arrive within seconds rather than weeks, and it saves paper.

Here's a look at the card editor.  I enjoy getting to tweak details such as envelopes, liners, stamps, and even a postmark (I'd love to see a Tokyo postmark someday, hint hint). The designers did a great job making their service feel like real paper. It's a refreshing change from fast-paced texts and emails, and taking a moment to accessorize a card gives a nice personal touch.

Selecting an envelope color

When the recipient gets the card, they follow a link from an email to a viewing page. It's quite skeuomorphic, with animations of opening a card through an envelope, and the reveal of the card inside. 

A preview of a thank you card

Paperless Post partners with some of my favorite card designers, including Hello!Lucky, Rifle Paper Company, Kate Spade, Jonathan Adler, and Oscar de la Renta. Here's a few examples of cards I like. To keep it on theme with my blog, I've selected a few that have lots of lovely ornamentation.

Rose Floral Ikat Wedding Invitation by Oscar de la Renta

Birch Monarch Suite Invitation by Rifle Paper Co.

Hammertime by Hello!Lucky

Shiny and Sparkly by Jonathan Adler

Moor Heather by Anthropologie

The site has expanded quite a bit since I first began using it years ago. Now you can order cards in paper. While this is a bit ironic given their name, for something significant like a wedding invite, it's good to have the option to make it more permanent. I also notice they have Company holiday cards. In Japan, sending New Year's Greetings (年賀状 Nengajo) is bigger than sending Christmas cards, so I'd love to see more international offerings in the future.

 Final praise: their logo is a carrier pigeon. Great product and great mascot.

Post PAX

Okay, I just returned from PAX Prime (Penny Arcade Expo) in Seattle. It was very inspiring to meet the artists from Strip Search, watch Mike and Jerry create a strip, and I even got to ask a question to Mike and Jerry on what it's like to be a creative in the desolate Spokane, Washington. (Their answer: you outgrow it, and people like Robert Khoo just aren't there. Kind of like my experience.)

Anyhow, my internet connection was very bad for the weekend, but I did keep up the art during all the busy days. My fitbit tells me I did about 15K steps per day, so I was pretty tired.

Here's two drawings I made. The first is some ornamentation from the roof of the Paramount theater.

This chevron one I drew out of my head, but it's not so original. I've seen a lot of chevron prints like this out in the world. 

And I posted earlier that I got to try a Cintiq. It makes my iPad look like a toy.  You can actually see where the pen will drop, and it works with whatever software is on your computer (i.e. Illustrator in my case). The friendly guys at the Wacom booth gave me a new nib to fix my bamboo pen, and I asked them about why the nibs were so thick. Turns out, this restriction is Apple's fault. They are super-secretive about their hardware and the minimum width for styli is 5mm. Mike was using a Windows tablet running Manga Studio to create this week's Penny Arcade Studio. 

This hobby is fantastic and I'm so happy I've found a way to get back into art. However it's getting expensive, so I've added ads to the blog and am gradually stepping up the merchandise. All proceeds will go back into art.