Behind the Scenes: Designing Our Core Principles Collection

I designed our first risograph greeting card collection during November and December of 2024. We usually plan our new releases to happen twice a year around the wholesale trade show schedule in January and August, and we had actually planned to take this cycle off and not release new cards in order to give us more time to work on next summer’s products (we’re going to be at the Noted show in Las Vegas in July, our first in-person trade show since 2017!). But we’ve been experimenting with risograph printing a bit in our Art for Change line, and I decided to do a quick collection of risograph cards to see how I liked using it in that format and test them out with our buyers.

I was feeling worried and sad after the presidential election here in the US, and I felt compelled to try and make something that would help our community connect and support each other in the season to come. We like to think of a new year as a blank slate, the first page of a new story. But of course in reality, we turn the page to January 1 right where we are: in the middle of a whole tangle of unfolding narratives. Leading up to 2025, I was more aware than ever that most of our plotlines are usually bogged down in the messiest part of the story, where you aren’t sure how it will end, or even whether it is a tragedy or a comedy. In fact, the only characteristic all these sagas and serials and sequels have in common is uncertainty: no one knows how this new chapter will unspool.

I was talking to an old friend on the phone and she said, “no matter what, you have to rest, you have to gather your strength, you have to protect your core.” I thought about it a lot and realized what I wanted was a set of images and words that would help us hold on to our values. The first and most important of these for me and my team is that whatever comes, we’ll get through it together. We believe that the root of joy is found in our relationships. We believe that beauty is healing and that learning never ends, and we believe in embracing the adventure. So I set out to come up with some new designs that would help us draw our people close during this new season, helping each other stay strong and stay true to each other and ourselves.

We'll Get Through This is the first card I designed in this collection, and it set the tone for the rest. I learned a lot about using color in riso printing working on these designs; the inks for riso come in premixed colors and it has taken some time and experimenting to understand the differences between these soy-based inks and our letterpress inks. Figuring out how the colors will layer and combine is an ongoing process!

One of the biggest differences between riso and woodblock printing is that in riso, you can use shades of grey, where the color is there in grades. With a woodblock, it is either there or not there, but in riso, you can use much finer textures that can make things look soft in a way that is hard to do in woodblock printing. It is fun to play with but a whole new challenge to figure out the nuances! Some of the designs came out a little bit lighter than I was hoping but when we did our second printing we were able to recalibrate the colors and levels and achieve a more saturated, vibrant effect.

We are very lucky to live near Olympic National Park and last summer I got to hike the Switchback trail (it’s a real leg burner!) with my wonderful friend and neighbor Ashton, so that’s where I got the images for our Hiking card.

Dahlias grow well where we live and there’s a farm on the way to my dad’s house. I often pick up flowers from the roadside stand, and one afternoon my stepmom Janice and I sat on the couch and drew the bouquet I’d brought over with some really saturated water-soluble crayons I love sketching with. Our “So Lucky to Have You” card was inspired by that afternoon and by Janice and her incredible generosity and warmth and kindness and curiosity. She and my dad do an amazing job of keeping my mom and Janice’s late husband Al present in our memories and our lives, and she has mothered me in all kinds of incredible ways over the last five years. Mother’s Day can be hard for my family and I wanted a card that would let me tell Janice how much she means to me.

Thank you for reading friends! It is one of the unreasonable, miraculous joys of my life that I get to make images like this for a living and I'm grateful to you for being so encouraging and supportive when I experiment with new styles and mediums. You're the best! If you have thoughts or ideas about risograph printing, activism, friendship or anything else that comes to mind we'd love to hear from you in the comments.

Color swatches and test prints,