In the autumn of 2020, unable to visit indoors owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, my father, uncle, and grandmother started spending time in her empty garage, wearing masks with the door open. My grandmother created a sign designating it Gallery 10, after her apartment number, and put out a guest book. The gallery grew to include kid art, photographs, watercolors, and a framed poster of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch. Gradually, “the gallery” replaced “the garage” as the space’s primary descriptor, a kind of synecdoche for the collective fictions we needed to get through the pandemic.
It occurred to me that gallery business cards would make a good birthday gift. But as with any semi-joking custom present, it was important that they not look jokey — I wanted to create something that my grandmother would genuinely enjoy. The cheapest, most widely available options were matte- or semi-gloss-coated digital prints, which I hate; they fray easily. After trawling through reviews, I settled on Jukebox’s Colorplan cards. They’re printed onto an uncoated 18-point stock from British paper company G.F Smith. The depth of color of the card stock allows for the print itself to be simple and monochromatic, which made the design process easier. I didn’t love Jukebox’s templates; at the time, I had an Adobe Creative Suite plan that included InDesign, so I created my own — a simple black border, a curlicue mark, name, title. Two years later, my grandmother still uses the cards. She gives them to everyone who visits, and she’ll also slip one into greeting cards. I keep one in my wallet; one corner is bent, but it’s still in remarkably good shape. We’re spending less time in the gallery, but the associations are still positive of a space transformed by a little ingenuity.
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