Designing Custom Postcards

I designed some custom postcards recently. Partially out of boredom, partially because I offered to send some to a few people and they accepted, and partially because I just really like postcards and physical letters. I've been working on this for a few hours today, after a busy day of errands, bike riding, and hiking with a weighted pack. I met some really cool people today and had a lovely chat. Hello Tom and Anne!

The image for this post is a digitized version of a test I did when first playing around with a calligraphy set years ago. I was practicing various letters for a project I was working on, and decided that the word "Ass" would be the perfect test word. I stand by that decision. This is one of the postcard designs. I know a few people, far away, who would recognize that design if it showed up to their door. It was very fun to make, and has kept me laughing and smiling throughout the years. I've never been confident in my creative abilities, but this piece has stood as a very good reminder that I am actually capable of creating beauty, in some form. I spent my entire life working on such serious, rigid projects. I designed mechanical parts and even house blue prints in high school and college, but that's all computers and perfect lines and dimensions. This is one of very few things I created by hand that I consider properly creative. I was in a very rare mental state of whimsy and creativity when I made that ass. It only took me about a minute and a single attempt to get that. It makes me happy as someone who didn't think they would ever be creative. It's definitely the fanciest ass I've ever seen.

I wasn't planning to write today, but it's been an interesting day. I'm working on my very first product to sell. The humble post card. I've not given them much thought since I was a child, but I still love them. You find an awesome post card while you're out and about, write in a personal message, stick a stamp on it, and send it off to surprise someone. To me, this just sounds fun. I want to send some! As I can never seem to find anything I like, I tend to create things myself. I started playing with the open source vector editing program Inskcape years ago. I needed to make some simple designs for something, and ended up really enjoying designing things. I'm no expert or proper artist, but I know just enough to get basic stuff done. I've designed custom soap packaging for a friend and business owner, designed custom cards for a board game I'm designing, created custom playing card designs, made logos, and now post cards. These post cards are really just a test for my online business and web store, and practice for me to see a product through from design, all the way to shipping. I bought one for myself to test payment processing and such, and that went quite well. I'm happy with it so far. I don't expect these to sell well or make me a ton of money. That's just not the point. If they never sell, I plan to just take them out of inventory on my web store, fill them out, and send them to friends around the world for fun. No matter what happens, I gain experience and have some fun.

I finished 5 designs today, and ordered 5 each from moo.com. I'm moving from Ohio to Illinois very soon, so I had them shipped to my new home ahead of me. The experience on moo.com was quite good, aside from the payment page refusing to load on the Firefox web browser I use on my Linux laptop. I had to complete payment on my Android phone. That was annoying. The thing I really like about Moo is that you can have multiple different designs in the same batch. I just uploaded 5 different back images, a standard front image, and it was automatically divided out. This is great, as the minimum order quantity for postcards is 25. I would have had to order 125 post cards to get the full variety I wanted. Very cool.

The actual design process was fairly simple. I used Moo's design guidelines to create a blank postcard template in Inskcape, added the main image, then the front where you right in the address and message, exported them both as images, and uploaded to moo.com. I also remembered an old trick I learned a few years ago to make choosing a font easier: use a font viewer program to see examples of all fonts at once. On Pop!_OS Linux, the standard font viewer just shows huge examples of all installed fonts and lets you scroll through them. I've got tons of custom fonts installed these days, so it was great to see them all side by side. I chose a hand written style of font for this project. I had made a super fancy back for a special, secret postcard, but didn't end up using it for this first batch because I could only upload a single version to be printed. I'll have to order a full batch of those special post cards and send them out later. They're for a private group that I belong to. I screwed up by not getting the proper back printed for those cards, but I'll send the new ones out for free to those who get the boring version. I feel dumb for not getting it right the first time, but mistakes teach valuable lessons.

Postcards might seem quite different from my other custom electronics projects and adventure stuff, but they're a great way to get started in product design and practice running a business. I take my business very seriously, despite the name and silliness surrounding it. The goal is to solve legitimate life problems, provide joy, and reverse some of the damage done by crappy people and businesses. I don't think it would be wise to start learning the business side of things AFTER the product design is finished. I want to make sure the base is solid before I start trying more advanced stuff.

I've got some custom industrial computer systems in the works, as well as a video game console, dedicated media player, and some off grid automation systems. Those are massive projects with very steep learning costs and high development costs. I could just put the business side of things on hold while I try to finish one of those designs and get it certified, or I could play around with things like post cards. So for now, post cards and such it is. I also have some custom playing cards to finish and have printed, as well as a custom card game a custom board game to finish. Those have been in the works for a few years now, and were put on hold for personal reasons. The card game will likely be the first to get finished and manufactured. The board game is incredibly complicated to design, test, and refine. It has at least a year of development left.

I keep myself busy with multiple projects at once as a way to manage my raging ADHD (properly diagnosed). Otherwise, I get burned out on one thing, then just give up on working on anything and waste a ton of time. Bouncing between projects is fantastic for getting stuff done. I'll happily chug along for 10 hours a day on various things. I've been told, for my entire life, that I just need to focus on one thing and get it done before starting something else. I tried it for a very long time. It did not work. I just end up discouraged. Even with the ADHD ping ponging around, I still get a lot done. Just today I went for a hike, ate lunch by the lake, got a test print of a postcard done, redesigned all 5 post cards, ordered the prints, overhauled the website product listings and layout, and am writing this post. I get tired of people telling me how to work. That's a rant for another day though.

I've got some more bullet points to cover, so I'll knock those out real quick and take a break. I'm starting to get mentally tired. Busy day. Take breaks whenever you can. Very important.

I originally had the shipping for the postcards set to be rounded up from the price I pay for the stamps. I changed it down to the actual price of the stamps to save people a little more money. I also reviewed the price of the postcards themselves. I decided to leave them as is, even though I lose money in the form of the value of my time to fill them out and ship them. I'm ok with that. This is an experiment for fun. I have a 50% discount code for the private group as well. I'll lose even more money on that, but they're wonderful people who have been incredibly supportive over the years. I was tempted to discount it 100%, but I need to get some proper sales logged, with actual money coming in, so I can test out the sale tax collection system and make sure I'm setting enough aside to pay the IRS at the end of the year. I'm not messing with taxes. Bad idea to get in trouble with the IRS.

I did try to print postcards locally through Office Max. The quality of the print was good, but the thickest card stock they have is only 110lb weight, and nowhere near thick and nice enough for me to sell on my site or send to people. I printed one as a sample, and it was terrible. Misaligned between the front and back as well. I'd never ship such a thing. I lost about $3.00 on that test, but that's ok. The cost of doing business and such. That $3.00 showed me immediately that I needed to hire a professional printer for these. That's a pretty cheap lesson. At least I didn't pay an assistant or someone to go to Office Max and print me 100 post cards and then find out they suck. I've made stupid mistakes like that before. Not fun.

Right now all of the postcard variations are listed as out of stock, and unable to be purchased. I'll mark them back in stock after I move and can physically hold and inspect them. Shopify will let you sell things that are out of stock but I find that stressful. If I owned a printer and could make these as needed, I would offer made to order items. I have to depend on a printing service right now, so I have to wait until I actually have the items in hand and can be quite certain they are ready to go out the door. I picture somehow getting an order for a few hundred post cards, having to order them, then having something go wrong, and upsetting a bunch of people. Worse would be having to refund all of the money and apologize to everyone. I am absolutely baffled by the crippling reputational damage most businesses are willing to take these days just to get money in the bank as fast as possible. I don't want to ever operate like that. I understand that running a business involves extreme risk, but it doesn't have to involve unnecessary risk. I've got three people on a waiting list for post cards right now. I could have easily set the product to active, sent them the link, taken their money, and then hoped I figured it out later. I've watched so many people do that over the years. It's not pretty. Serious stress. Once you take someone's money, you're in their debt. You better make damn sure you can provide. I avoid this crippling stress by just telling people they're on the wait list and that I'll reach out as soon as everything is actually ready.  My time working with countless business owners has taught me many great lessons like that. I also just hate stress. It's rather stressful.

I came back to this post to add something I forgot earlier. By the time I got here, I had forgotten what I came here to do...I have no idea at this point. This is why I often stop everything I'm doing to write things down while they're fresh. Funny thing is, as soon as I give up trying to remember, it comes to me. I came here to mention that I have Ecologi running on the site. It takes 80 cents of every purchase on my site to fund the planting of a tree. This came to mind, because it's another loss for me on these postcards. I wouldn't be surprised if I just lost money on each on and ended up in the negatives. That's ok though. I've got some money in the business account to cover it, and I like trees. As much as I like the idea of others taking money from me to plant trees for me, I prefer to go do it myself. Once I get the details sorted out, I'm just going to go plant trees myself. Reminds me of Beau Miles on YouTube. Very cool guy. Go check him out. He's much better at making videos than I am. Back to remembering things forgotten: When I was a little kid, I would forget something, picture this huge Macaw parrot in knew in my head, and sometimes I would immediately remember what I had forgotten. I think that works by distracting myself with something simple that clears my mind and lets recent thoughts come back to mind.  talked to a mental health professional about that technique recently and they weren't entirely sure what to make of it. It works for me though, so I just let it go.

Well, I hope you've enjoyed my rambling about post cards and business stuff. I am planning to overhaul my writing style and put more effort and organization into the writing side of things, but right now, I have to focus on my upcoming move, product design, YouTube videos, earning money, and enjoying life a little. I'm insanely busy and just trying to make sure I force myself to write and stay mentally active. Cheers.