Pigeon Posted - Robin and Wren

I came up with the idea of Pigeon after falling out of love with social media.

I came to realise that most, if not all, of my online interactions were pretty negative. Either I was compulsively checking my posts for ‘likes’, or I was getting annoyed by people showing off and oversharing. They probably felt the same about me. And somehow, no matter how many likes my FB posts received, it was never quite enough, and they led to a time-wasting column of comments.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my friends. But for all that frenetic activity, the platform wasn’t fostering any genuine sense of connection. There was something about it that left me feeling hollow and empty. So I took the plunge and closed my social media accounts. But then a good friend of mine moved to the USA. Until then, apart from trips to the pub (no longer possible), we’d only really communicated on Facebook, which meant I needed a new way of keeping in touch. And that made me think about letters.

Compared with posting online, there have traditionally been quite a few hurdles to writing a letter. Laying hands on writing paper, finding a matching envelope, digging out your friend’s address… Then there’s the format, the tyranny of the empty page. How on earth do you start? And if I’m honest, letter writing isn’t exactly edgy. It’s old school, sure, but certainly not millennial.

And that got me thinking. I’m a graphic designer with an engineering background, and I happen to love origami. I wanted to find a way of making letter writing fun, new, beautiful, and easy.

Pigeon is the result.

The envelope is integral to the letter, and the space to write in is not too daunting. I sometimes say it’s like Twitter, but with a pen. Once you get a correspondence going, you’ll always have your friend’s address to hand inside their latest letter. Pigeons are also the perfect size to hold a Polaroid photo, so you can slip in a selfie. And the design means each Pigeon is a small object of beauty.

If you don’t normally write letters, you’re in for an unexpected treat – the completely irrational joy of not receiving an instant reply to your message… It sounds perverse in our day and age, that having to wait can feel good. But it really does. Trust me. I’ve discovered first hand that there’s a real pleasure in knowing that, in the next day or two, a friend will receive a completely personal note from you - just from you, and that you might get a hand-written reply some time after that. Delayed gratification is good for the soul.

Sending one letter to one friend and waiting for one reply is entirely satisfying. It’s personal and unique; narrowcasting, not broadcasting. Added to which, I often read letters from friends two or three times over. I can’t say the same for social media. Romantic as it sounds, with a letter you end up with a little part of your friend, to keep for ever. To tuck into a book and stumble across at some later date. A letter holds its value, and that helps sustain true friendship. Nothing digital can compare.

When our Dawn Chorus Pigeons flew off the shelves in the Pigeon Loft, we knew it was time to expand the aviary. Introducing our friends Jenny Wren and Robin Redbreast, perfectly poised to fly through the post with a chirrup of pleasure. Entrust a message to one of these little beauties and you know that they’ll bring cheer to anyone to whom you choose to write a letter.

6 Pigeons per pack – each one a different design.