Postcrossing Blog

The World Postcard Day postcard design contest is underway, and with a week to go, it’s time to meet the judges! They are the ones who are going to be looking at this year’s designs for the 2023's official postcard and have the hard task of choosing the best one!

First of all, we have Dietrich Wolf Fenner from the Berlin Museum of Communications, where last year we celebrated the launch of the German Postcrossing stamp. Dietrich is the head of the museum’s public relations department and has undoubtedly seen many stamps and postcards during office hours!

Wally Koval is the co-founder of the Accidentally Wes Anderson community, which brings together over a million adventurers, all sharing an appreciation for inspiring designs and architecture. Last year, AWA launched a popular book of postcards, spotlighting 26 special places around the globe.

Alison Hitchcock and Brian Greenley co-founded “From Me To You”, a charity that encourages people to write letters to friends and family suffering from cancer, keeping them connected at a time when they feel most disconnected.

Pauline Chrétien (aka paulinectart) was last year’s winner of the World Postcard Day design contest, so we thought it would be brilliant to invite her to take part this year, but as a judge! Pauline is an animation student in France.

And last but (hopefully) not least, me (Ana) and Paulo! Besides organizing the contest, we’ll also have a vote, and we promise to use all our postcard knowledge to vote wisely.

So there you have it — this year’s dream team is ready for voting duties when the contest closes a week from now. If you were planning on submitting a design, this is the time to do it — go! go! go! 💪

June is here, and you know what time it is… it’s time to open the submissions for the World Postcard Day design contest! October 1st is getting closer and closer, which means it’s time to ask all aspiring designers and illustrators to pick up their drawing tools and start designing the postcard that will represent this year’s World Postcard Day! 😊

The theme of 2023's postcard design contest is “Postal Hugs”, inspired by Annie in Wisconsin. Some years ago for the 150 Years of Postcards exhibition, she sent us a wonderful postcard that read “A postcard is a hug sent through the mail”. This simple mental picture is exactly how we think about postcards: like an extension of our arms, ready to hug a recipient far away!

Hopefully the Postcrossing community and beyond will be inspired to create something amazing for this year’s postcard, so that in October we will all be able to send a beautiful postcard all over the world!

Before you submit a design, please make sure to read the rules carefully. Designs can be submitted (in digital form only) until July 15 (UTC) on the contest page, and we’ll announce the winner until August 15.

And, as usual, there are some prizes! Besides the glow and recognition of having your design be the one that so many people will be sending all around the world on October first, we’re also giving away a fantastic Wacom One drawing tablet, as well as a Pantone postcard box. May the best design win!

Even if you’re not brilliant at drawing, we hope you’ll help us spread the word about the contest and poke your creative friends to participate… especially if they are aspiring artists and could use a little boost getting their career started and to put their art out there. We can’t wait to see how everyone will interpret this year’s theme!

Here we go again!

The calendar tells us it’s less than 4 months until World Postcard Day, so it’s time to start preparing for the big day. First things first: the design contest to choose this year’s representative postcard is now officially open!

The theme of 2022's contest is the topic that has inevitably been on everyone’s mind: World Peace. It’s in periods of conflict that we truly understand how important peace is — without it, nothing else is achievable. Postcards can be tiny ambassadors for peace, delivering messages of hope, connecting people across borders and promoting more awareness about the world and its cultures.

We hope this theme inspires many of you to pick up your drawing tools and create something beautiful for this year’s postcard, which will later be shared and sent to all over the world.

Before you do so, please make sure to read the rules carefully. You can submit your designs (in digital form only) until July 15 on the contest page, and we’ll announce the winner until August 15.

And, as usual, there are some prizes! Besides the guaranteed warm fuzzy feeling of having your design be the one to represent the World Postcard Day, we’re also giving away one fantastic Wacom Intuos drawing tablet for the first prize, and a trilogy of Austin Kleon books for the second and third prizes. We’re big fans of Wacom’s versatile drawing tablets, as well as Austin’s pragmatic and inspirational advice for artists (which really applies to everyone). All winners will also receive a Pantone postcard box, to round things up. YAY! 🎉

Even if you’re not brilliant at design, we hope you’ll help us spread the word about the contest and poke your creative friends to participate… especially if they are aspiring artists and could use a little push to put their art out there. 😊 We can’t wait to see how everyone will interpret this year’s theme!

Submissions are now open on the World Postcard Day design contest that we’re running together with our friends at Finepaper, and interested designers can upload their designs! So, if you’re artistically inclined, it’s time to come up with ideas that represent this year’s theme “Across the world on a postcard”, and submit them on the contest page. I’m sure postcrossers know better than anyone the feeling of traveling to another place through a postcard… so it should be an easy task to represent this idea trough an image, right? 😇

And let’s talk prizes! Although only one postcard will be the official postcard of this year’s World Postcard Day, the best three designs will all receive prizes:

Each winner will be awarded a bluetooth Wacom drawing tablet, plus some neat Pantone products as well! These Pantone goodies were kindly sponsored by Tecnimprensa (the company that represents Pantone in Portugal), and I’m sure they’ll come in handy.

You have until the end of July 15^th (UTC) to submit your proposals digitally, and the winners will be announced in mid-August, which should then give everyone plenty of time to download and print the official postcard locally, like last year.

Even if you’re not very artistically inclined, make sure to spread the word about the contest to any talented friends. We are super curious about this year’s designs, and can’t wait to see which postcard will be the official World Postcard Day postcard of 2021! 🎉

… and so it starts again! 😊

We’ve been working behind the scenes on this year’s edition of the World Postcard Day, and today we’d like to announce one of the most exciting parts of it: the graphic design competition to find the official postcard of 2021's events! Last year, we tested by running the contest in Portugal only, together with our friends at Finepaper, a neat printing and design company based in Lisbon. This year, and in the global spirit of postcards, we’re extending the competition to the whole world. So no matter whether you’re a student in Bangladesh, an artist in Argentina, or maybe just someone who really likes drawing, crafts or design — you can participate too!

This year’s theme is “Around the world on a postcard”. The ability to transport us to far away places through the image and words is a really nice characteristic of postcards, and we would like to see this facet featured on this year’s official postcard. How you will choose to make that work is up to you — illustration, photography or some sort of mixed design approach are all valid approaches to the topic. The sky is the limit!

Will there be prizes? You mean, besides worldwide recognition and the immense satisfaction of seeing your design traveling all around the world? 🤪 Naturally! They’ll be announced on the World Postcard Day contest page soon, along with the rules and juries of the contest.

Digital design submissions open later this month, but we are giving postcrossers an early heads-up so you can start working on your proposals. Gather your pencils or fire up Photoshop, and tell your friends to participate too! The contest will run for around 2 months, and results will be published on the World Postcard Day page (and here on the blog) sometime after the deadline closes. We are really looking forward to seeing your creative ideas pour in!

And if, like many of us, you don’t have a lot of creative bones in your body, this is a good time to start making plans and think how you’ll celebrate this year’s event. While we’re busy poking post offices and big postal museums, you can get in touch with your local libraries, museums, schools or other organizations and invite them to commemorate this date as well! Share your ideas with others in the comments below or in this forum topic — now’s the time to start creating some buzz and prepare to make October 1^st the best day in the year!