Dear you,

We mean a familiar face, a shared memory, a joke that has somehow remained funny to exactly two people for eleven years. Something that makes you think, “They really do know me.” We think more people should get to feel that. So, here we are, having opinions about postcards.

For a long time, making things affordable meant making them alike. This was a practical solution to a production problem. It was a slightly less convincing explanation of how people work.

We believe technology gives us room to make things around a person instead. Their taste, their stories, their very particular idea of what looks good. Personalization should go further than finding somewhere to put your initials. You have an entire personality. It seems a shame to use only the first letters.

AI should add to the world. It should help you make something that would otherwise have stayed in your head. A painting of your dad as a Renaissance duke holding a leaf blower, for example. We don’t know why he needs the leaf blower. You do. That’s the important part.

You bring the imagination, the memories and the reason for making it. Technology helps you bring it to life. You’re the creator. The software does not get to sign the card.

And sometimes a photograph and “miss you” are already everything the thing needs to be. In which case, we should have the good sense to leave them alone. Not every lovely moment needs an upgrade.

We’re trying to make thoughtfulness easier. You bring the thought. The printing, posting and other things that somehow turn a nice idea into three errands are our problem.

We like the internet, by the way. For one thing, we’re on it. There is real friendship in a group chat and real meaning in a photograph on your phone. We just don’t think everything good that happens there has to stay there.

A memory can become something on somebody’s kitchen shelf. It gets to be part of their Tuesday, noticed while they’re waiting for the kettle. That seems like a nice life for a photograph. Certainly worth considering alongside being rediscovered during a storage warning.

As it becomes easier to make things on screens, we think it’s worth caring more about what happens beyond them.

You still only get so many afternoons with the people you love. However clever our tools become, your attention remains something only you can give. We don’t want to keep it here just to improve a number on a dashboard. We want to help you give a little of it to somebody who’ll be glad you did.

Then you can close the tab.
We’ll try not to take it personally.

Of course, looking like a good company is getting easier. You can build a nice website, say thoughtful things and publish an entire manifesto about how thoughtful those things are. We appear to have completed that part.

Actually being a good company takes more doing.

We want the product to be better than the ad. We’d rather promise a little less and deliver a little more, with clear expectations and small surprises in the right direction. When we get something wrong, it’s our responsibility to acknowledge it and work to put it right. You shouldn’t have to quote this page at us.

Trust is yours to give. You’re perfectly entitled to wait for the postcard.

Postcards are where we’re starting. The bigger idea is to make things around particular people and purposes, rather than “the average customer”, whose address we have so far been unable to find. Things that feel so you because they were genuinely made for you.

This isn’t an ambition to fill the world with more stuff. The world seems reasonably well supplied. We want to make things with a reason to exist, and preferably a better reason than “we thought we could sell this”.

That’s quite a lot of thinking to put behind a postcard. Happily, none of it needs to go on the back.

The person receiving it doesn’t need a position on artificial intelligence or the future of manufacturing. They just know you thought of them. You made something for them. And now they’re holding it.