What We Write About.

While most peo­ple use Christ­mas as a time to reach out to fam­ily and friends through card-sending, Mar­ian Ban­t­jes, famous designer and illus­tra­tor, waits a few months until Valentine’s Day, instead. And, she doesn’t just send out ordi­nary, store-bought cards. Over the past eight years, Ban­t­jes’ valen­tines have included laser-cutting, hand-lettering, recy­cling of old cards, and even draw­ing an indi­vid­ual valen­tine for every one of the 150 peo­ple on her list. It is her beau­ti­ful, care­ful and per­sonal atten­tion to detail that has led her to such remark­able suc­cess in brand­ing and design.

This year, inspired by the travel she fre­quently does, Ban­t­jes repur­posed old post­cards sent from from around the world as the can­vas for her valen­tines. The post­cards dated from 1901 to about 1990, and some of them had even been sent before, evi­denced by the hand­writ­ten mes­sages on the back. To add a per­sonal touch, her mes­sage, “From me wher­ever I am/To you wher­ever you are,” was printed in sil­ver over each one. You can see more of this year’s cards here.

While Ban­t­jes’ cus­tom cards require a lot of time and effort to send out (her valen­tines list has grown close to 480 peo­ple), it is a nice ges­ture that we can eas­ily use on a smaller scale. Some­times, just a sim­ple and per­son­al­ized detail can make all the difference.

For more inspi­ra­tion, you can see her valen­tines from other years, here: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011.