Mark + Fold
Stationery Designer
Ever since childhood, Mark+Fold founder Amy Cooper-Wright has been fascinated by stationery.
“I get great pleasure from starting a notebook – especially to mark the beginning of a new project,” she says. She began her career in graphic design, putting together glossy coffee-table books; working with those high-quality materials fuelled her passion for paper, and she launched her own stationery brand in 2015. Amy had noticed with frustration that mass-market notebooks were often poorly made, and marketed primarily at women: “I wanted to create stationery that was beautifully made, and gender neutral.” Through Mark+Fold, she offers luxury, elegant products that – most essentially – feel good to use.
Designing a product always begins with trying out different papers. Amy looks for materials that feel special, tactile and satisfying; Takeo Yomoshi paper, for example, contains sheep’s wool.
“We look at what small interventions we can make to enhance the inherent properties of the material,” says Amy. “For example, the Wild Black card we use on the cover of the Mark One is 35% cotton, and has a wonderful pillowy texture – so it takes blind embossing extremely well, and you can achieve a very crisp, deep impression.”
The finishing touches are given just as much attention; receipts are hand-written, and every item is numbered in pencil. “We wrap each one as if it’s going to a good friend of ours.”
“We’re in contact with paper mills all over the world, and we seek out the most remarkable papers we can find. When we invent new products, we take ideas from those materials and the processes we encounter, always with the intention of inspiring others; a great notebook can turn planning your travels, or deciding on your next career move, into a truly exciting process.”
