America’s original pop-up greeting card company.
Now celebrating our 50th anniversary as a family business.
(Yipee!)
“We draw our design ideas from a wide variety of social and cultural sources, but the creation and production of our pop-up cards is very much an art. Every card is highly unique in its innovative design, from the paper to the rubber band that makes them pop.” – Lowell Hess, Graphics3 Paper Engineer and illustrator on winning both ‘Card of the Year’ and ‘Best Traditional Christmas Card’ the first time entered in the Greeting Card Association’s International Greeting Card Awards.
Graphics3's first rubber band-activated pop-up Christmas card was mailed to customers and friends. So enthusiastic was the response that they, in effect, put us in the greeting card business - with a unique twist; we marketed directly to our own customers, not to stores, rare in 1974.
For fifty years Graphics3’s award-winning pop-up card designs have spread excitement and joy by breaking through the expectations set by a plain flat envelope in the mail, creating countless memories and strengthening our customer’s relationships like no other greeting cards.
Unique to Graphics3, our remarkable pop-up cards are freestanding (or hanging!), more fully dimensional ‘in-the-round’, perfect for display on tree or table - and truly appreciated as a gift as much as a greeting card. Yet they mail for a single stamp!
Our customers, many businesses, enjoy our whimsically unique designs, quantity-based discount pricing, and single-stamp postage. Most of all, our customers love hearing from their recipients who often have their own collections of gifted Graphics3 pop-up cards saved and on display during the holidays each year, all beneficiaries of a wonderful tradition they create - with Graphics3.
We enjoy working directly with our customers; you will not find our Christmas cards in stores. We market directly via our catalog - and often busy word of mouth!
Graphics3' focus on customers has earned us the high privilege of being part of our customer’s annual holiday celebrations for years on end. Our portfolio unique, highly engineered pop-up card designs keep our customers on top, season after season.
Along with our famous 3-dimensional Christmas cards, Graphics3 also manufactures our rubber band-activated pop-up polygon design, an intriguing fully geometric 3d pop-up ball shape with 14 different sides - popular for desk calendars, custom printed greetings, and direct mail promotions people keep – all mailing for a single stamp.
All of Graphics3’s designs are proudly produced in North America. We showcase our collection for customers each year via our catalog and online. You can join in the fun here.
About Lowell Hess… paper engineer and illustrator extraordinaire:
“Almost everything that guy ever did makes my head explode.”
– A contemporary illustrator, commenting on Lowell Hess’ lifetime of work.
Lowell Hess was the inventive genius behind Graphics3’s original pop-up card designs. An Oklahoma native, Lowell served as a lieutenant in the US Army in Europe during World War II and later attended the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. Lowell came of age as an illustrator during the heyday of magazine illustration, his art shining from the covers of Collier’s, New York Magazine, and Boy’s Life as well as the hugely popular children’s Golden Book series, touching the lives of millions.
Lowell possessed an uncanny ability to visualize 3-dimensional transformations from flat 2-dimensional art, combining knife, paper and brush with brilliance long before computers and lasers. For centuries, wonderfully creative paper engineers had taken the art of pop-up design to new heights from between the folded covers of books and cards. With Graphics3, Lowell Hess pioneered the innovation of freestanding pop-up designs that required no cover – a hidden rubber band would create the magic on opening the envelope!
“Card of the Year” - Winner of the International Greeting Card Association Awards.
Graphics3 entered seven of Lowell Hess’s original pop-up card designs for the first time in the International Greeting Card Awards held by the Greeting Card Association in conjunction with the 1990 National Stationary Show in New York City. These “Louie Awards”, so named for the father of the American Christmas card, Louie Prang, are the greeting card industry equivalent of Hollywood’s Emmy, Oscar, or Tony Awards. Actress Mariette Hartley hosted the ceremony in the famed Waldorf-Astoria’ Grand Ballroom.
The first time entered, out of some 800 greeting card publishers, all seven Lowell Hess designed Graphics3 pop-up cards were nominated as finalists, winning top honors outright in five categories plus winning the industry’s highest honor, the ‘Card of the Year’ for Graphics3's ‘English Toy Shoppe’, a Charles Dickens theme pop-up, this design also winning the award for ‘Best Traditional Christmas Card’. The following year a Graphics3 design once again won the ‘Best Traditional Christmas Card’ second year in a row. Graphics3's direct marketing orientation and the retail focus of the greeting card industry curtailed involvement in subsequent years.