Our new Finding the Light Collection is our most sustainable release yet.

Update: here's the collection we previewed in this post!

I have something exciting to show you: these are some sneak peeks from our new Finding the Light Collection of greeting cards for spring that we’re going to be releasing at the end of this month!

I decided to go back to my roots for this release and use a black and white color palette with a metallic silver for a middle value. The silver is a true metallic (it has tiny flecks of aluminum in it) so it reflects some light but isn’t shiny like foil.

With everything we've all been through lately, this pared down palette has felt right to me while I’ve been trying to express some of the more raw emotions and complicated feelings I know a lot of us have been experiencing.

I also chose to work in black and white because I wanted to highlight a new black ink we've been using. It's made with biopigments derived from algae. Yes, algae!! The very same kind that is in your morning smoothie. The pigments were developed by a company called Living Ink and developed into a printing ink by the company in Cincinnati we have been working with for years to custom mix all our letterpress inks. 

I know it may not seem like ink is a large part of the products we make or consume but it isn’t just what is printed on to the surfaces of things. Pigments are used to create the color in all the things we use, including electronics, building materials, car parts etc. Almost everything black that you see needed pigment to make it that way, and it was all made of carbon created by burning fossil fuels. Regular black colorants are made from byproducts of the petrochemicals industry and they haven't changed in 100 years. These new pigments are made from algae which you probably know is a renewable resource that actually consumes carbon dioxide instead of creating it. Not only that but the people at Living Ink have actually harnessed waste streams from existing algae production, so it is helping support that industry in a really important way. 

Anyway, I’m excited about this so I wanted to share it with you! It feels great to have a small but measurable way to use a carbon-negative material in our work as an alternative to petrochemicals. These new cards will of course be printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper, as are all of the other greeting cards in our catalog. You can read more about how we build sustainability into our business here. I know being responsible stewards of our environment is important to you and I'm excited to be taking one more small step in the right direction.

Thanks for reading friends, stay tuned for the full collection, I’ll keep you posted!