Paper Culture » baby announcements

Stripes: Inspiration of the Week

Tammy — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 16:37:07 +0000

At Paper Culture, our current products consist primarily of social stationery and wall art. However, we’ve always looked far beyond those arenas for our design inspiration. Our blog, Inspired, is about our journey to find eco friendly and modern design inspiration. Internally, we often create moodboards to capture different design inspirations. We thought we would share with you some of our favorites by posting a moodboard of the week. Each week, we’ll share a theme and show you how at least one of our products was inspired by this theme.

This week, we are in love with stripes. There’s something about the mix of thick & thin lines and alternating colors that makes this pattern a classic yet timeless mainstay. We’re loving how easy and breezy they look on a summer dress, yet how modern and sleek dark stripes look on a white watch. You can see just how much we are inspired by stripes – just type “stripes” in our website and you’ll find our collection of cards that pay homage to this versatile design! One of our favorites is our birth announcement featuring bright modern stripes.

1 Fairmount Laptop Sleeve by Kate Spade, $60
2 Diagonal Stripes Birth Announcement by Paper Culture, $1.39
3 Striped Cotton and Silk Dress by Sonia Rykiel, $295
4 Blazer by H&M, $50
5 Color Me Cozy Travel Mug by Modcloth, $19
6 Grey & White Striped Paper Straws by Little Dance, $10
7 Striped Canvas Diamond Tote by Rebecca Minkoff, $195
8 Hooded Baby Onesie by Old Navy, $13
9 Striped Blue Goa Watch by Lacoste, $95
10 Growing Stripes Scarf by Forever 21, $13

As will be our tradition, we’ve provided direct links to all of the items, but we’ve also created a Pinterest Stripes Moodboard. Check it out and also take a look at our other Pinterest boards while you’re at it. Of course, this is all a new experiment, so we welcome your feedback as well.

Me and Baby B: The Birth Announcement

Christopher — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 04:04:53 +0000

Welcome to the official birth announcement for a series I’m calling “Me and Baby B”. As for the “me” part, I’m, Christopher Wu, the CEO and co-founder of Paper Culture. Baby B is my precocious almost 3 year old daughter. No, her name isn’t actually B, but you know, we live in a strange world and my wife only agreed to let me write this series if I left out some of the exact details.

Me and Baby B

So, why a series? Well, Baby B and Paper Culture are inextricably linked. When my wife (who is our house’s resident super hero) was pregnant with Baby B, she said, “you’re in charge of the birth announcements.” Truthfully, she was such a super hero that even when pregnant and working full time, she still did almost all of the prep for Baby B. I’m one of those type A folks, hate to be outdone and my wife was putting me to shame. So assigned my one task, I was determined to find some small redemption. She figured after years at Snapfish and at HP, I better know something about getting personalized photo products printed. Of course, I was only “in charge” in the sense that I was tasked with execution, because her edict came with some very specific instructions (for all of those with over achieving wives, you know how it is!). The essential criteria: modern design, 100% recycled and great feeling paper. And if I was going to have to address them myself, if you’ve ever seen my handwriting you’ll understand that simply wasn’t an option. So, I added a criteria – I wanted somebody to send them on our behalf (yes, call it lazy – but I like to think about it as leveraging competitive advantage)! We looked around and to our surprise, there really wasn’t a service that offered all of those thing, and thus, Paper Culture was born.

So Baby B was really part of the Paper Culture inspiration. I say “part” because our other 3 co-founders (Creative Director, Huiling Chen; CTO, Armando Singer; and President, Anurag Mendhekar) have their own parts of the story which I’ll let them tell. But the other reason I’m writing this blog series is that Paper Culture is so much more to me than just creating great eco stationery, it’s about an opportunity on a daily basis to speak to you, the community of Paper Culture. As you can imagine, our community is full of parents, and as a first time parent, it’s a privilege for me to listen, learn and talk to the community on a regular basis. You’ve not only helped us hatch Paper Culture, but you’ve helped me learn to be a parent.

I hope “Me and Baby B” is just an extension of that daily conversation.

Welcome to the Paper Culture INSPIRED Blog

Kirsten — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 19:20:42 +0000

Paper Culture's Inspired Blog

Ever wonder how we here at Paper Culture find inspiration? Do we sit in a dimly lit room with our eyes tightly shut, holding hands, chanting “ommmm”?

Along those lines, we welcome your feedback and ideas. Find your “inner-designer” and tell us how Paper Culture has inspired you in 200 words or less. Maybe a bridal shower invitation determined the theme of your party or a holiday photo card motivated you to make your own wrapping paper. You tell us! If we select your story, we’ll give you a $50 gift certificate for your next Paper Culture order. How’s that for inspiration? Simply share your story by commenting on this blog or send an email to kirstena@paperculture.com.

Um, no — or at least, not that I’m aware of.

The joke around here is that our inspiration is erratic. As easy as it would be to look to one person, place or thing for incitement, that is simply not the case. Being paper lovers, we are mindful of the trends around us, but between you and me, we probably spend the least amount of time looking at other invitations, announcements and stationery. Besides, that would be imitating, and how uninspired is that?

It’s much more fun to look at fashion, architecture or environmental advances as sources of ideas. We also find enormous inspiration in organizations that provide leadership in areas that touch our communities, including those that promote education, the health of our families and environmental innovation.

But really, we find our most important inspiration in talking to you.

Like most blogs, we will share fun company tidbits, special discounts, design previews and maybe even some of the more interesting corporate stuff. But our real goal is to have this be a forum for us to exchange ideas, to share thoughts and ultimately, for us to find the source of our next inspiration.