Slowest work year since the early 90s so far in 2011, so I’m once again putting together a new mailing postcard in an effort to rattle the bushes and get some momentum going around here. While brainstorming about what to do this year (we decided that another large format card might be the best bet, since it worked pretty well last year), I got to thinking about what kind of work that I’d like to promote, and I remembered how much I enjoyed doing maps back in the early years of the past decade. This grew into the concept of doing one of those ‘picture maps’ with the ‘greetings from’ lettering across the face. My original concept was to draw a ‘specific’ item for each and every state (either a landmark, or famous person, or major industry), but after a while, the concept turned into a sort of career retrospective, where I was lifting images from old illustrations spanning the past twenty one years. Also, I wanted to highlight my versatility, plus the concept of using my old illustrations as reprint art, so I tried including as many different styles as possible. I’ve put together an ‘annotated’ version of the card with a special page off of my website, which will explain where each of these illustrations came from, original client and date, and also explain several of the personal tidbits hidden throughout the image. (click on the image above to see a larger version) These should be going out in the next couple of weeks, so if you don’t end up on the mailing list and wish to receive one, be sure and drop me an email and I’ll make sure you get added to the recipients.

Addendum: August 2011: I think this ended up being one of the least effective mailers I’ve ever sent out. I got one call, from a designer looking to have me do an illustration of an ‘old time ‘greetings from’ postcard’. Another oddity about this mailing, was the fact that we never received a single ‘return to sender’ postcard back to us in the mail (usually we receive at least 25-50), which makes me wonder how reliable the mailing service we use actually is.