Happy 2008! We hope you had a wonderful holiday and rang in the new year with a bang. We've got lots of Modern Letter Project resolutions for '08, but first, we wanted to kick off the year by telling you about one of our favorite notecards and papergoods' designers in months. Essimar on etsy makes print-and-paper goods using screenprinting and collage techniques to create bright pops in color and both delicate and incredibly intricate textures. We love both her cards and her one-of-a-kind prints that make a bold, but whimsical statement.

See more work and purchase notecards, papergoods, and artwork at Essimar's etsy shop.

Lakshmi Pratury, a venture capitalist and the founder of Tamarind Grove, a group that builds connections and community around the Indian community in both the United States and America, reflects in this talk about the lost art of letter writing. In it, she talks about leaving a value legacy versus a financial one, having received a notebook of letters full of thoughts from her deceased father. After first stating, "Handwriting is a disappearing art. I’m all for email and thinking while typing, but why give up old habits for new? why can’t we have letter-writing AND email exchange in our lives?," she reflects and adds, "The paper that touched his hand is in mine and I feel connected to him."

Do you think that letter-writing and email exchange can co-exist? With whom? And how?

Let us know and listen to more great TED talks here.

(video via sahadeva)

We admit the thought is a wee bit morbid, but how many of you have ever imagined your own funeral? What do you wish you could still say -- out of love, out of anger, out of joy, out of regret.

The Dead Letter Office is a holding space for these hypothetical sentiments. Based on the premise that "You are now dead. You just died. You don't know how it happened, you don't know what happens now. The only thing you know for certain is that your life is over," the project offers you a chance to compose a letter to the open world. Be as brief or wordy as you want.

Letters are kept in an online database of Dead Letters from other people (anonymous) written to others. You can read other random Dead Letters or explore the database for the saddest, funniest, most touching, angriest, and most insightful letters.

The project suggests, not to foreshadow, to print your letter out, "fold it up and keep it in your wallet, never telling anyone your Dead Letter exists—until the day you die."

Find out more by visiting The Dead Letter Office, and add your letter to the database.

Thanks to the Urban Outfitters' blog for featuring us on their site!

It's also where we learned about Future Me--the website and the book--an awesome project where you can write emails to your future self.

We're kind of suckers for vintage typefaces and old-style letterheads, so were psyched to discover the David A. Botranger collection of Vintage Letterheads. This collection is a treasure-box of trucking letterheads amassed during the 1950s and 1960s which were received from trucking companies, private carriers, manufacturers, and suppliers.

Also great? The collections of truck-stop ads and truck pictures.

Another great project for you snail mail junkies is Postcrossing, a postcard project that tracks postcards mailed and received from all over the world.

Once you've registered on the site, you'll receive an address that comes with an ID identifying that specific postcard. Find (or make) a postcard of anything you like and send it to your assigned address along the the ID number. Every time you send a postcard, someone else will also receive your address, so you should get a postcrossing correspondence as well. You can write about anything--yourself, country, an anecdote, favorite movie or book.

Sign up, and take a look at the Postcrossing flickr page, where over 29,000 postcards have been sent and received.

Yesterday we mentioned postcrossing--the international postcard exchange--but today we're really excited to tell you about bookcrossing--the international book exchange. Do you have lots of books you'd like to share with the world--and other ones you'd like to read but not buy? With bookcrossing, you can register your library (each book gets its own unique ID number) and you release it into the world. As it makes its way from destination to destination (you can search for books you'd like), each book is "caught," and the recipient makes a journal entry that it was received. You can take advantage of the postal service to follow the journey of your books around the world.

The faster you just on the book bandwagon, the faster you'll get books, so hurry up, and sign up here.

We're always looking for ways to beautify our letters without spending too much money on pretty store bought cards. It's ever a challenge to personalize while still keeping a letter pretty, and avoiding visual clutter.

One of our favorite ways to add personal touches to letters is using stamps. That's right--old rubber and ink stamps. TraciBunkers on Etsy sells 8 1/2" x 5 1/2" sheets of mail art postage stamps, which you can cut out to make individual stamps or use as an entire sheet, for $15, as well as a sheet of the alphabet (uppercase and lowercase) for $8. Use stamps, with different inkpads, cutouts from old magazines, and in combination with your favorite plain papers and envelopes to make neat custom stationery.

You can also get great custom stamps made at www.rubberstamps.net and The Stamping Place. If you're in New York, then definitely stop by at Casey Rubber Stamps at 322 E. 11th Street, our favorite little shop for custom stamps (and friendly service).

Every year we—yes, seriously—look forward to the release of the new stamps for the year. This year? A big surprise: sheets of Charles and Ray Eames’ stamps celebrating the couples contributions to architecture, design, photography, furniture, and as emblems of American history. The stamps, which feature sixteen of the Eames’ creations, were designed by artist Derry noyes.

The USPS notes:
“Perhaps best known for their furniture, the Eameses were husband and wife as well as design partners. Their extraordinary body of creative work — which reflected the nation’s youthful and inventive outlook after World War II — also included architecture, films and exhibits. Without abandoning tradition, Charles and Ray Eames used new materials and technology to create high-quality products that addressed everyday problems and made modern design available to the American public.”

See the other 2008 edition stamps here.

We at the Modern Letter Project are suckers for beautiful letterpress and handmade books- and Angela Liguori does not disappoint. Her etsy shop is host to a myriad of whimsical surprises, including Italian ribbons for sewing, bookbinding and other crafts. Don’t miss the twelve hand-made Italian recipe cards (first course, second course and desserts) as well as a number of other beautifully illustrated books.

More work from Angela Liguori can be found at Carta, Inc., her official business site, and Edizioni, her blog.

Holy smokes! We are psyched! Julia Rothman, one of our favorite textile designers, now has greeting cards for sale on Hello Lucky, $3.50 for each 3.5" x 4.75" letter-pressed card, or $12.00 for a set of 6.

Buy the cards here and see more of Julia's gorgeous work here.

Nothing says "thinking of you" more than a postcard--whether while on vacation in foreign lands or just something you picked up from your sidewalk vendor. We love the look of these 1950s, 60s, and 70s French postcards -- scenes from daily life -- bocce and dinner, the beach and the laundromat.

Reuters reports in hilarious fashion that the snail mail postal service--in Poland, at least--is truly slower than snails.

"An IT worker, after receiving a letter on January 3 that was sent on December 20 as priority mail, calculated that a snail would have made it even faster to his home than the letter."

Read the full article here.

Hello! Sorry we have been so delinquent about our posting this week, but worry not, we are still here and planning a big redesign for this site. We just wanted to let you know about these great notebooks ($30) we fell in love with from Studio Matador that are made up of black hardboard flaps on either side with 192 pages of mixed colored paper on the inside. The binding--well this is the truly special part--is handsewn in sections, so it lays nice and flat and also has exposed threads.

While a notebook is no letter--perhaps you have a special friend somewhere who deserves an entire compilation of your thoughts? Or, an idea for you letter-writers: write your letter in the first page of a notebook you love, and send the rest to your Modern Letter Project recipient. A gift started by you, finished by them, with only room to grow.