Here is the full set of five cards:
As you can see, the cards share a general aesthetic: more-or-less black and white with a lot of white space for awesome compositions and paired with a brightly colored envelope. There is a range of text and image, from the text-centric Hartford Nicknames card to the line drawing of the Hartford Skyline card. In the West End Street Map card, the text creates the image and in the Hartford Text/Image card, the images are inside the text. We love achieving the right balance of words and drawings!
Hartford Love
Younger sister Rory is responsible for the creation of this card. We have always loved the play on words with Hartford and Heartford, or even ♥ford. What better way of telling someone how special they are than this?
The text is hand-set lead type and the red heart is a paper cutout. This gives the card layers of relief: the words pressed into the paper, the surface of the paper itself and the raised relief of the heart. Multiple layers of art for multiple layers of love!
We've paired this card with a sunny orange envelope which complements the red heart nicely. If you dig it (and we hope you do!) you can buy this card at our etsy site here.
Hartford Skyline
This skyline first appeared in a drawing older sister Addy did for an exhibition at the Hartford Public Library's ArtWalk. It was then cleaned up for a rehearsal dinner invite we printed not too long ago.
We love how versatile this little drawing is! In our card, like the invitation above, the skyline appears at the bottom of the paper, leaving a large open sky above.
Showcased are the Colt Building, the Capitol Building, City Place, the Travelers Tower, the Boat Building, the CT Science Center and the Stilts Building. Check out the stars on the dome of the Colt Building! An iconic image of Hartford, for sure.
This card comes with a vibrant persimmon envelope and can be purchased here.
Hartford Text/Image
This card gets its inspiration from great vintage postcards like these:
We love how images from the two locations appear inside the letters of their names. We thought we'd do the same thing with Hartford except we would include cultural aspects as well as physical locations.
We also streamlined our design so it better matches the aesthetic of the other cards in the set. We nixed any background images and kept the letters in a straight line. Older sister Addy once again put her drawing skills to use to bring you (H) the Whalers, (A) the Colt Building, (R) Mark Twain's portrait, (T) the Charter Oak Tree, (F) the Boat Building, (O) the Capitol, (R) a map of Hartford's neighborhoods, (D) Alexander Calder's Stegosaurus.
Each drawing includes the name of what it is, so if you are sending this card to a friend who doesn't know the city that well, she will still know what she is looking at! You can buy this card with it's electric green envelope here.
Hartford Nicknames
Ah, the blind emboss. One of our favorite techniques for its subtle effect and because we don't have to ink up the press! Here we rely solely on the hand-set lead type being impressed into the paper.
This idea came from our father, the inestimable John Q. Gale, who is obsessed with HTFD! Beginning with that abbreviation, we then listed the other names by which Hartford is known: Hartbeat, Insurance Capital, and Rising Star.
Here you can really appreciate the texture of the paper and the physical impression of letterpress. This quiet card is paired with a loud fluorescent yellow envelope for a bold statement. If you'd like to shout your appreciation of Hartford, buy this card here!
West End Street Map
As third-generation West End residents, we have a deep love not only for our city but also for our neighborhood. And being map lovers as well, how could we miss the opportunity to bring the two together? We were heavily inspired by these amazing Typographic Maps, particularly the one of New York City. Younger sister Rory started with a fabulous map
which she found on this awesome West End website. She then painstakingly recreated each street in the neighborhood in text.
Because the neighborhood is boarded by the Park River on one side, we decided that this card needed to have more colors than just black. The river appears in blue and local attractions are in green.
It is pretty amazing all that tiny text printed so well! Whether you're a past or current resident, a visitor to the neighborhood, or a connoisseur of maps, this card and its bright green envelope are for you and you can buy them here!
The Full Set
And finally, if you love everything you have seen here and want one of each, you are in luck because we are selling them as a set!
They come packaged together with fun bakers twine. We love how the vibrant envelopes look stacked together!
We ♥ Hartford! Thanks for reading!
Beautifully executed, beautifully written
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