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Sharing creative optimism via postcards with Dropbox
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How we created a series of free-to-download digital postcards offering creative hope across the globe, designed and shared via Dropbox
To offer a sense of positivity following a long period of isolation, It’s Nice That and Dropbox collaborated to commission eight creatives, who created visual signifiers of hope to send to loved ones.
Following on from our highly popular Indoors Zine project with Dropbox, the brand collaborated again with It’s Nice That to create another mood-boosting series with creatives around the world. Created and delivered as parts of the globe began to emerge from lockdowns, we wanted to produce a shareable note of positivity in the form of digital postcards.
Crystal Zapata: Sending you warmth
Naomi Anderson Subryan: Let’s go walkies
Crystal Zapata: Sending you warmth
Naomi Anderson Subryan: Let’s go walkies
Naomi Anderson Subryan: Let’s go walkies
To begin, we curated a global cohort of eight creatives to participate, briefing them on the idea of creating an uplifting commission aiming to combat the isolation experienced by everyone during lockdowns.
We invited illustrators, designers and photographers to take part, and each contributor began by discussing ideas and themes together for the series in a collaborative Dropbox Paper thread. This allowed each collaborator to add reference material and thought starters, as well as encourage and comment on the work of their peers.
Following feedback from both It’s Nice That and the wider group of creatives involved, each creative then settled on a route and created their individual postcard, using Dropbox folders to organise their files as the project developed collaboratively.
1 of 6
Tess Smiths Roberts: Upsetti spaghetti
1 of 6
Tess Smiths Roberts: Upsetti spaghetti
Naomi Anderson Subryan: Let’s go walkies
The final eight postcards were then made available to our audience to download via Dropbox. Some creations were designed to be sent to friends, such as London-based illustrator Tess Smith-Roberts’ postcard, which looks forward to sharing a plate of spaghetti with pals over dinner. Others spoke of the isolation felt during lockdown, such as Exeter-based creative Scotty Gillespie’s animated postcard portraying his longing for a hug after being separated from his family. Elsewhere, Seoul-born, California-based Min Heo opted for humour, in a chuckle-inducing creation showing a cat’s mischievous day at home.
To share the eight postcards with our audience, It’s Nice That’s editorial team sat down with each creative to discuss their personal experience of the pandemic and how it had inspired their reflective postcard. This was then presented as a long-form article on the site with a detailed Q&A with each contributor, as well as signposting ways for the commissioned postcards to be downloaded.
Via Dropbox Transfer, audiences were then able to download each commission in a postcard format with an editable “To” and “From” section they could fill out personally. These could then be shared digitally with a loved one, or in a format designed specifically for Instagram Stories. We also wanted to encourage our audience to share these creations far and wide, by offering the option to download a larger edition of the artworks to print out and pop in their window to extend the sense of hope even further.
Scotty Gillespie: You here soon
- 2,553,000 Reach across It’s Nice That social channels
- Over 7,000 postcard downloads
- 2+ million reach across It’s Nice That’s social channels
- 8 creatives commissioned from five cities around the world
As well as being downloaded over 7,000 times by It’s Nice That readers, Just Checking In was also shared by numerous platforms, such as London on the Inside.
The final suite of postcards proved how creativity can offer a collective source of hope during dark times, even through the small act of emailing a loved one a digital postcard. “Working on Just Checking In was a great source of joy for our team, allowing us to connect with creatives all over the world to produce an uplifting artwork after such a difficult time for creatives,” says Lucy Bourton, senior editor at It’s Nice That. “Seeing how these postcards were shared far and wide truly showcased how much an artwork can brighten someone’s day.”