Blog - thinking of Hugh

Twice a year Zeichen Press releases a batch of new cards. Twice a year Jen and I hold a top-secret meeting in the Zeichen Press Headquarters and discuss which cards should be included in the release. Decisions are made, tears are shed, hair is pulled.

Printing took place this week and, luckily, the temperature hovered around 97°. Jen loves printing in a sauna. I stayed in the shop while she printed, it was an act of solidarity and I’m sure it did not go unnoticed. I sat on one of the metal stools because I wanted to experience what it was like to sit on a stove-top.

There are more top-secret meetings/fist-fights during the printing process. We need to decide which color paper to print the card on and (hold onto your hats) which color envelope to pair with the card.

Should it be a Green Apple envelope or a Berrylicious envelope?? These are tough decisions but we have to make them.

And don’t think that you could just do what we do, it takes nerves of steel and hearts of gold.

Here are the new cards: These are so amazing, they may melt your faces:

[maw-kish] adjective sentimental in a feeble or sickly way • archaic having a faint sickly flavor : the mawkish smell of warm beer

I don’t think I understand the definition. Or, maybe I do. Aren’t a lot of greeting cards mawkish?

Who would give that card? Wait, who made that card? Probably a very nice person. A person who loves hearts and roses and rhymes and sparkles.

I tried to make a mawkish card. That’s Hugh Beaumont, the kindly father from Leave it to Beaver.Hugh hated that he was typecast and later opened a Christmas tree farm in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. I don’t think he opened the Christmas tree farm because he hated that he was typecast. But I don’t know – he was obviously a complicated man.