Sustainable Postcards
Postcards designed to be sustainable whilst being attractive souvenirs for tourists.
Tourism is big business for a lot of countries – in some cases, it is a sole income. Consequently, it encourages the creation of lots of souvenirs for people to take with them as memories. Unfortunately, these are often ridiculous things, like a t-shirt that says, "I went to _____ and all I got was this t-shirt," and not something that anyone would buy, in reality. So these unwanted items inevitably end up in landfill sites, hanving been made for no fit purpose.
In an effort to combat this, I wanted to produce something that would help countries with tourists' monetary input, but also with sustainability and forward-thinking in mind. That, and producing something that people would actually want. So I picked some countries, took their flag colour schemes, found their national flowers; and produced these six postcards (top to bottom: Estonia, Ireland, Hungary, Poland, Colombia, and Iceland).
The idea behind these is that once bought, these postcards can be planted, and the a flower (the national of the country it was bought from; a Corn Poppy in the above example, Poland). A seed from the flower will be mixed in with the paper stock when it is being mixed, and the paper will avoid being dyed to preserve the seed. The designs would be screen-printed (or riso-printed) on with non-toxic inks, which should not affect the ground they are planted into.
The postcards are printed double-sided, once in English, once in the national language. Their designs are made up of super-imposed sillouhettes of national flowers in backgrounds (with a multiply effect over text). Large-print text reading the name of the flower (Christmas Orchid / Orquídea de Navidad in the above example, Colombia), from the country, "With Love." The smaller text gives an expanded message about creating a longer-lasting, sustainable memory, and basic instructions on how to look after specific flowers.