After 20 years exhibiting at the National Stationery Show and helping evolve the marketplace, Envelopments will be launching a Full Service Wedding Album like the industry’s never seen before. This innovative sales tool allows you to take design as far as your customers want to go.

Bursting with over 100 designs and more than 200 card stock colors, the Envelopments album offers more opportunities than any other album in the industry. From rustic to modern, floral to geometric, you will find a well-rounded spectrum of trendsetting and traditional design.

In keeping with a traditional album, the Envelopments collection features physical wedding samples, fonts and ink colors to choose from, high quality printing and fully assembled invitations that your customers will fall in love with.

As always, Envelopments works to enable our Dealers/Designers to foster a dynamic interactive relationship with their clients. Our new web application provides powerful tools to easily personalize or customize invitation ensembles, preview their configuration in real-time, send proofs to customers on the fly and order at the click of a button.

And it doesn’t end there…

We will also be showcasing our new, streamlined Design Studio. With a lower price point that packs the same punch, our new Design Studio is the perfect “Toolbox” to support your custom design business needs.

Envelopments is proud to revolutionize the marketplace once again, continually introducing new products and services, and featuring opportunities for resellers to maximize the new Envelopments personalization and customization capabilities- making.

If you happen to be in New York at NSS next week, we would love to see you! Visit us at Booth 2820!

Envelopments: Ever Evolving

What made you want to work at Envelopments?

When going through the interview process at Envelopments I was drawn initially to the positive, energetic atmosphere and family-like work environment. Everyone here is so close and I knew I could see myself fitting in and contributing to the design team. What excited me most was the opportunity to work with a team that I knew I could learn so much from. In the time that I’ve been here I’ve absorbed so much design knowledge and am excited to keep developing my own style and growing as a designer.

How did you get into graphic design?

I studied Graphic Communication in school and over time developed a fascination for typography. From there I started seeking out my own style and aesthetic and began to appreciate all aspects of design and how they all overlap and relate to each other.

How would you describe your design aesthetic?

Vintage with a modern flair

Where do you find inspiration for design?

Generally books and magazines. I could stare at book covers for hours on end, especially old books.  I also love pulling color combos from aspects of everyday life and replicating them in my designs.  For weddings specifically, Pinterest has been a huge resource for inspiration as well.

What’s your favorite Envelopments Color?

Wintergreen and Goodnight

Current design obsession?

Nicolas Fredrickson, a hand-letterer that I discovered perusing Pinterest. His work is unique and timeless, so full of character. Perfectly imperfect. Check him out!

Favorite font?

I tend to go through font phases; right now I’m drawn to swash/modern serifs. Domani CP is one I recently discovered that is just gorgeous. I also love the Lost Type fonts; Liberator, Deming, Wisdom Script and Geared Slab are some of my favorites. Go-to wedding fonts would have to be Melany Lane combined with a classic serif like Clarendon or Garamond.

Last purchase made strictly based on design?

I bought an old but AWESOME coffee table-type book from a flea market on fashion in rock music. It’s huge, with gorgeous black and white film photography and the best vintage typography that fits the era so well. I ended up tearing out some of the images and framing them. They’re on the wall in my living room!

What profession would you most likely be doing if you weren’t a designer?

When I was younger I wanted to work with animals, I think if I had studied Biology or Environmental studies I would have tried to work with a team that researches and studies endangered species somewhere in Africa, or it would be cool to be a photographer for National Geographic. More realistically though, I’d be a rock star.

What’s your motto?

Keep Calm and Eat Tacos #KCET

A place you’re most likely to be found on any given day? (Other than the office & home)

At a small, divey bar listening to a good band, or the beach for sunset

What’s your favorite song/artist?

Too many favorites! Here are a few current favs: Big Scary, Junip, Islands, Solander, Hozier, Lo-fang, Kodaline

What’s your favorite movie/book?

Books: Divine Secrets of the Yaya Sisterhood, Life of Pi, Slaughterhouse Five, Into the Wild

Movies: Juno, Elf,

What’s your guilty pleasure?

Taco Bell

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?

Make the most of every given moment. Embrace the present!

What made you want to work at Envelopments?

I fell in love with the family-like culture the moment I walked into Envelopments. I was also really inspired by the Envelopments Design Team and the work they were producing. I have always appreciated stationery, and when I heard about the opportunity, I was so excited to use my passion for typography and print design alongside such a talented team.

How did you get into graphic design?

As a kid, I was always fascinated with textile designs, patterns, and color. I went on to study Fine Arts with an emphasis in Graphic Design at Biola University and have fallen more in love with the practice each day. There is something really rewarding about being able to design pieces which people can connect and relate to in a personal way.
How would you describe your design aesthetic?

I love pairing bright and fun patterns with clean and feminine typefaces. I have a modern/feminine aesthetic.

Where do you find inspiration for design?

I am inspired by textile designs and patterns; a simple pattern is usually the starting point of each of my designs.

What’s your favorite Envelopments Color?

Mint is always a great choice.

Current design obsession?

Recently, I’ve been listening to a lot of Jessica Hische’s interviews and I have been really inspired by her design wisdom. Not only is her work innovative and technically wonderful, but Hische is also an intelligent thinker. If you are a designer, I would highly recommend reading her “Thoughts and Advice” module on her website…you will thank me!

Favorite font?

My “go-to” fonts are typically Archer and Neutraface. I always love the versatility of a large font family. These fonts can function both as a bold title as well as a legible type block. Plus, Martha Stewart Weddings magazine uses Archer, so it has to be good!
Last purchase made strictly based on design?

I recently splurged and bought a new Wacom tablet. Because I am an avid pattern maker, the tablet is a great resource for creating organic shapes and design elements.

What profession would you most likely be doing if you weren’t a designer?

I have always been fond of baking. I can make an amazing lemon buttercream macaron!

What’s your motto?

“The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.”
A place you’re most likely to be found on any given day? (Other than the office & home)

When I’m not working on design, you can usually find me at Ikea. Since my husband and I live in a small house, we are constantly trying to find fun and effective ways to organize our home. We are big “Ikea-hackers”!

What’s your favorite song/artist?

Beyonce and Stevie Nicks are my girls.

What’s your favorite movie/book?

J.D. Salinger’s, Franny and Zooey and Top Gun. Who doesn’t love a young Tom Cruise?

What’s your guilty pleasure?

Printed pants, pastries, yelp, and coconuts.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?

“Always be yourself, unless you can be Beyonce. Then always be Beyonce.”

Sometimes, life catches us off guard!  Hummm, sounds like something a basketball coach might say.

Tom was just that, a great coach!  He gave 150% of himself whether it was coaching high school basketball or his teammates here at Envelopments.

How crazy is it…a guy who never gets sick, gets the flu and the next thing ya know he is on life support.  Then not here.

We are very saddened by this loss of a great man. A teammate, a coach, a mentor, a father, a husband, a brother, a son, a friend.

In the last five years, since you joined our team…our Envelopments family, we have worked together to build a top notch company.  Your spirit and vitality will live on as we honor you and the time we have had together.

Tom, we will all miss your smiling face!

One of Tom’s favorite quotes:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

http://blog.envelopments.com/about/tom-johns/

It’s always an honor to be asked by our respected colleagues in the industry to share our story.

Liene of ThinkSplendid.com recently invited me to do just that…share where we came from, who we are, and how’d we do it…

Can you share a little bit about the Envelopments story — how it began and how it’s evolved over the years?
Envelopments evolved out Elements. Elements was a card and gift store founded by sisters, Holly and Deborah, back in 1985. They were way ahead of their time in bringing custom printing to stationery products they carried in their store. In 1991, I had just returned from living in Europe and was helping them to rethink their business as the economy was not doing well and retail was in stuck in a cul-de-sac. We leveraged the new desk top publishing technologies of that time to add the services of printing on the beautiful stationery papers they carried. That quickly led to creating custom invitations and announcements for their customers. Essentially we installed a design studio in a retail store…it was a designers playground with all the products on hand to create beautiful wedding invitations, corporate communications, birth announcements and so on. Deborah was not satisfied by the simple two dimensional aspects of what she was designing. As a three dimensional artist, jewelry designer, and lack of knowing any better, she pushed her creativity to new places to satisfy her growing clientele base. That led to the first Envelopments products quickly gathering demand by their customers. Fast forward…we developed a full product line, spun off a new company and eventually closed Elements on its 20 year anniversary to focus entirely on Envelopments.

That’s a big change in business, what did you learn along the way of that journey?
The first challenge was for Deborah and Holly to wrap their heads around the notion of creating a product line for Elements’ competition. When they first realized that creating limited quantities for their customers was not cost effective, Deborah suggested they offer the products to their competition to increase the quantities manufactured and lower the costs to make it more accessible to consumers. Holly thought about it further and did the numbers realizing that if they had just 10 accounts like Elements they would have a justifiable new business. The girls are masters of sharing and being very generous in their personal lives and applied that same sense of being to their business. One of the things they learned in retail was the challenging business model of buying product and sitting it on the shelf hoping someone would come in and buy that thing before you had to put it on sale. So, we took that frustration and applied it to a new business model for Envelopments customers by offering the opportunity to buy just what they needed to get the job done, a job that they already had a customer for and most likely a deposit from their customer to get started. We offered to be their production facility, warehouse and ship very fast so they did not have to hold inventory. This, excellent customer service and tips and tricks to be better in business is what has propelled Envelopments to success…oh, a great product line also helps.

You’ve grown into a respectable business, developing a new market segment and setting trends. What are the hurdles you have had to overcome to get where you are today?
First we had to come from out of nowhere to be recognized, respected and trusted that we could keep the promises we were making. Becoming recognized in our industry was initially done by getting recognition from leading publications and even on national television. This helped to get us in the face of consumers asking their local stationery stores for our brand and specifically for our products.

We garnered respect by being asked by others in our industry to actually do their own invites and announcements utilizing our products. In both of these instances we relied heavily on happy customers and word of mouth…this was long before social media. Trust that we could deliver is all about infrastructure. This has been my mantra. Making sure we didn’t grow too fast, that we had the tools in place, the staff to support our vision and the means to finance it all based on the measurable success at each milestone along the way. Oh yeah, and did I mention a great product line helps! Speaking of products, our development of a new market segment of products and services led to another big challenge which was to inform the marketplace about doing custom design and production which was not the norm at the time. Eventually we had imitators, many of them our own customers, also surfaced trying to do what we do…which of course they can’t. And then the economy went sideways which was completely out of our control. But we adjusted, kept on track with our plans and are very excited by what the future holds for Envelopments.

You’re a family-owned company and have long-term employees who have become like family. What are some of the lessons you’ve learned over the years in building a culture where people like coming to work?
As we say at Envelopments we don’t have an HR department, we have a department of genealogy. Some of our team members have been with us for over 16 years. Many have come from Elements. Others are friends or family members of other employees. Sometimes this can be a challenge as we end up trying to fit the job to the person vs finding an employee for the job. But we love the culture we have created and enjoy watching the friendships evolve, romances start, new babies growing into young adults, and being a part of everyone’s lives. One of the primary aspects of having happy, long term employees is them feeling like they are respected and well looked after, hence our benefits and insurance programs we offer.

Another aspect is having a great place to come to everyday. When we realized it was time to grow into a larger facility we took pride in turning our new building into a beautiful work environment for everyone even though we don’t have customers come to our facility. It was designed for them. Our employees have a beautiful lunchroom that opens to a patio surrounded by a bamboo garden. They have ergonomic desks that raise and lower to what suits the employee throughout the day. I also believe that since we designed it as an open environment everyone feels more connected and part of every aspect of the business vs being alone behind a door or in a cubicle. And then there are our beautiful products which our team loves, they believe in what we offer is great and how they service our customers is stellar. We get feedback all the time thanking them and patting them on the back for what they do for our customers. This really makes for a proud, happy employee.

Link to original article on ThinkSplendid.com

Font Men – SXSW 2014 Official Selection from dress code on Vimeo.

Our world is full of messages battling for your attention. We are all affected by fonts.  Where ever we look, from A to Z, we rely on typography to help clarify the message, enable legibility, and emote a sense of what is.

The Font Men, Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, are featured in this short film shedding light on their unexpected path to working together and becoming one of the most successful and well respected type design studios in the world.

At Envelopments we are font-oholics and just can’t get enough. You’ll see how much we love to play with type in our invitation, web, marketing designs…and even some of the custom tattoos worn by our crew.

So for us, it was a joy to have Font Men show up as an official selection for the 2014 SXSW Film Festival.

Click here to see all of our favorite videos.

Happy New Year! We hope 2014 will be full of exciting opportunities, joyous occasions, success in your endeavors, and full of warm hearted friends. Here at Envelopments we are doing everything we possibly can to help nurture a stellar 2014 for you.

Envelopments: Ever Evolving

Heading into 2014, Envelopments will celebrate our 20th anniversary since we introduced our first products and established a unique business model that was geared towards custom ordering and serving the Dealer/Designer market. We are very proud of where we are today and what the future holds for all of us.

Years of pioneering and establishing the market segment of providing ideas, tools and products for creating custom designed invitations and announcements, setting industry trends and enabling businesses to leverage our products and services, has led us to create a very powerful ecosystem know as Envelopments.

Our goal is to recognize the “power tools” we can develop to help make you better at what you do to serve your customer.

Whether it’s how we build our infrastructure to process your orders faster, or how we develop our web presence to enable you to inspire your customers, get referrals to you, create great design, or get printing done on our incredible range of paper products…that’s how we have ended up creating Envelopments ecosystem. Solving the challenges that face us all…getting the customer what they want, when they need it.

For 2014 we hope you dive in and explore our deep pool of incredible offerings, and that you stay tuned as we shed more light on the power of Envelopments at your fingertips.

We are here for you, the Dealer/Designer who loves paper, who loves creating that unique communique for their customer, and who loves working with an established company who has their back.

Cheers…and thank you!

Mark Smith
Co-founder & President

Once again my eyes deceive me. What I see is actually not what it is.  I love when that happens! In this video showing the paper art of Lu Hongbo you too will be amazed at how he has taken the concept of the age old Chinese paper lantern and created works of art beyond belief.

Click here to see all of our favorite videos.

As 2013 draws to a close, Ramon and crew are at the drawing boards designing up an Envelopments storm for 2014. So it is only fitting that Stationery Trends, the industry “go-to” publication, just recognized Ramon as one of the top ten designers to watch in 2014.

We are very proud of Ramon and thankful he has been part of the Envelopments family for many years.  He started working as a designer at Elements, the retail store Envelopments evolved out of.  He has designed tons of custom invitations and announcements over the years working directly with customers to meet their unique needs of expression.

Once we invited him to come over to Envelopments his role has blossomed to oversee many aspects of the Envelopments design department which include our products, advertisements, photo shoots, tradeshow booths, and on and on.

Now with the introduction of Envelopments “Make-it-Mine” designs and tools for creating custom invitations and announcements you will be seeing lots and lots of designs from Ramon and team in 2014.

Like Stationery Trends says, we think you’ll want to keep an eye on Ramon and his design prowess as the year unfolds.

Congrats Ramon…we always knew you are tops!

Fonts: Cocktail Shaker & Headline One HPLHS