The Joy of Delayed Gratification
Letters are intimate and a delight to receive.
Thanks to their miraculous homing instincts, pigeons have a long and honourable track record delivering letters. The ancient Greeks sent them out to broadcast the names of victorious athletes at the original Olympic Games. And Julius Caesar employed pigeon post during his conquest of Gaul. In recent centuries, of course – ever since 1660, when King Charles II established the Post Office – the poor old pigeon’s been somewhat edged out.
I think it’s time to reintroduce Pigeon Post.
Graphic designer John Morse-Brown is the creator of Pigeon, a line of stationery designed to revive the tradition of letter writing, updated for the modern age. They combine John’s love of origami, great design, and his passion for bringing back the art of beautiful, intentional, personal written communication.
John came up with the idea of Pigeon after falling out of love with social media. For all of the frenetic activity he and his friends were putting in, he felt wasn’t fostering any genuine sense of connection. There was something about it that left him feeling hollow and empty. So he took the plunge and closed his social media accounts. But then a good friend of his moved from Britain to the USA. Until then, apart from trips to the pub (which were no longer possible), they’d only really communicated on Facebook, which meant John needed a new way of keeping in touch with his friend. That made him think about letters.
Compared with posting online, letter writing creates quite a few hurdles: laying hands-on writing paper, finding an envelope, an address, a stamp. Then there’s the tyranny of the empty page. How on earth do you start?
John realized he had the opportunity to reinvent the letter. Just look at them! A joy to send and a delight to receive.
Listen in to my conversation with John on the JOMO(cast) where we discuss:
How John walked away from social media and revived letter writing to stay in contact with friends
How communicating more narrowly and deeply transforms our message into something intimate and desirable
How delayed gratification enhances the experience of receiving communication, and increases its value to the giver and recipient
How communication doesn’t have to be big, impressive, or unusual to be valuable and appreciated
