Bright Future

Bright Future is the most graphic card in the range. The front is deep black, painted rather than flat, and at its centre two hands reach in from either side with fingers spread around a dark crystal ball on a gold stand. The nails are painted blue, one wrist wears a gold cuff and the other a pearl bracelet, and the detail is what makes the illustration feel drawn by a person.

Around them the ground is a night sky: small gold and white stars, a crescent moon at the upper right, a tiny ringed Saturn at the lower left, and shooting stars trailing across both sides. A gold zigzag border runs the full edge of the black panel, and the card itself is cut with a deckled white edge that shows the paper's thickness.

YOUR FUTURE LOOKS BRIGHT is hand-lettered in white across the top and bottom, the words broken so FUTURE and BRIGHT take the emphasis. The lettering has the unevenness of brushwork rather than type.

Blank inside, with an envelope supplied. It is a card for beginnings rather than achievements: a new job, a move abroad, the end of something difficult, or a birthday for someone who is about to change direction. Pair it with something with equal presence rather than a soft bouquet. Browse all notecards.

The card is A6 folded with a blank inside page, and the deckled edge is genuine rather than printed, so the paper thickness is visible along all four sides. It is sent flat in a protective sleeve, which matters for a card with this much black: fingerprints show on a matte dark stock. When ordered with an arrangement it travels alongside rather than inside it.