“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 competition.
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Graphics3 is America’s original pop-up greeting card company, a family business founded in 1974. That year Graphics3 produced our first rubber band-activated pop-up Christmas cards to mail to customers and friends. So enthusiastic was customer response that they, in effect, put us in the greeting card business. 2024 celebrates our 50th anniversary, capping a family history in the printing business that began in 1934.
Graphics3’s cards are each individually assembled by hand in North America. Our pop-up cards are freestanding, uniquely displayable on tree or table, and more fully dimensional ‘in-the-round’ than others – as much a gift as a greeting card.
Our customers enjoy our whimsically unique designs, quantity-based pricing, and single-stamp postage. Most of all, they love hearing from their enthusiastic recipients who often have collections of their Graphics3 pop-up cards saved for display during the holidays.
We enjoy working directly with our customers; you will not find our Christmas cards in stores. We market directly via our catalog, the internet and word of mouth. Our focus on customers has earned Graphics3 the high privilege of being part of our customer’s annual holiday celebrations for many years. Our growing portfolio of over 100 unique card designs and pop-up calendars keeps our customers on top, season after season.
Along with the 3-dimensional Christmas cards, Graphics3 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 mail for a single stamp. We showcase our collection for customers each year via our catalog and online.
About Lowell Hess… artist and paper engineer extraordinaire:
“Almost everything that guy ever did makes my head explode.”
– A contemporary illustrator, commenting on Lowell Hess’ 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 also possessed an uncanny ability to visualize 3-dimensional transformations from flat 2-dimensional art, combining knife, paper and brush with brilliance long before computers. For centuries, talented paper engineers had taken the art of pop-up design to new heights from between the folded covers of wonderfully creative books. With Graphics3 Lowell pioneered freestanding pop-up designs that required no book or cover – the innovation of a hidden rubber band would create the magic on opening an envelope!
Winner of the International Greeting Card Association Awards: “Card of the Year”
For the first time Graphics3 entered seven of Lowell Hess’s original pop-up card designs 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.
Out of some 800 greeting card publishers, the first time entered, 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 again won the ‘Best Traditional Christmas Card’ for the second year in a row.