Artist Lea Redmond, who co-owns Oakland, California-based creative studio Leafcutter Designs with her brother, started the World’s Smallest Postal Service as a social art project in 2008. “I would bring a little wooden desk to local cafés and hand-transcribe patrons’ dictated letters onto teeny-tiny pieces of paper and fold them up with a miniature wax seal,” she says. The service proved popular, so Redmond expanded online to offer tiny one-inch-wide custom letters and cards, as well as 1.75-inch-wide packages, ideal for new product launches, marketing campaigns, and events.
Custom mass mailings start around $6 per piece, and require a minimum of 20 pieces. Each mailing is handmade, and Redmond recommends contacting her at least a month before the invitations need to be mailed, to allow time for the custom process. The cards and letters are enclosed in glassine envelopes along with tiny magnifying glasses so that recipients can read them. For the packages, clients can provide the tiny object they’d like to include, or Redmond can help brainstorm and source an appropriate item. The miniature goods arrive in a 6-by-10-inch padded mailer.
Redmond has customized designs for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Design*Sponge, Aplifi, and G2.