Riso-Printed New Years Card

Each year, I design a New Year’s card for my family. This “kin-keeping” exercise has become an opportunity to reflect on the previous year, dream about the year ahead, and share where my artistic brain is in that moment. After wanting to try Risograph for a many years, in late 2025 I decided to design a card that would take full advantage of the charms and quirks of that printing method.

The 2026 card featured an illustration of my family in front of our house and annotated on the back, some of the habits and coping mechanisms that got us through the previous 12 months.

The red and blue Riso inks allowed for good contrast, along with pops of bright color to highlight elements of the design. The design was meant to stand on its own, while also inviting the recipient to cut and fold it into a 3-D house.

The back of the card featured a desaturated version of the illustration from the front, with annotated elements that helped us in 2025.

In 2023, I included a crossword in our card design and was pleasantly surprised at how many recipients texted and sent photos about completing the puzzle. Since then, I’ve challenged myself to incorporate an interactive element into the design whenever possible. Getting mail is rare enough these days, and mail with an activity included seems to be very well received.

For this design, I was inspired by the cut-out activities that used to be on the back of cereal boxes to create something not only interactive, but 3-D. I settled on a cut-and-fold version of our house with our family and fun details on each side.

Knowing that not everyone would cut and fold the card, it was important that the design held up equally well when flat. A big challenge came in deciding what to do with the back of the card—ignore that it might be cut apart or try to work around the edges of the house shape from the front? I eventually settled on a desaturated version of the first illustration that highlighted details from the front and added in a few new ones in open spaces.

Views of the folded houses show elements from our lives over the past year, including my teen’s headphones, our native pollinator garden, and the Cooper’s hawk who’s been spotted in our yard a few times.

Detail of my teen Nora and our dogs

One of the (many) charms of Riso-printing is embracing the variations in how each print turns out

A view inside the folded house

Video of the prototype I created of my drawing to make sure the house fit together correctly

For weeks after the cards went out, I enjoyed texted photos of friends and family’s folded houses 💗