Penpals, but make it design: 2ly’s monthly letter project is bringing beauty back to post

Letters can be exciting, stressful, sad, and everything in between, be it overdue bills, postcards from far flung places, confessions of love or junk mail. Now, the co-authored print project 2ly has harnessed the act of letter writing as a platform for not only conversation, but expression. 2ly is made up of five people over three studios: SM Studio’s Molly Cranston and Safiye Gray, Florian ∞ Emden’s Hanako Emden and Sophie Florian, and Johanna Maierski of Berlin-based experimental print space, Colorama. Each month, SM Studio and Florian∞Emden take turns writing and designing a letter, then they’re Riso printed and distributed by Colorama. And you can sign up to receive them too.

The year-long project, which began in February 2024, happened to be the first time Hanako and Sophie, and Molly and Safiye, spoke – but it quickly established their friendship. “Letters are a very immediate and low-threshold form of writing,” 2ly says. “They evoke a playfulness because you reflect while you write and then you can add in trinkets and references to enrich it.” They were curious to see what voice would emerge from the collaboration – especially considering their “overlaps in interests”.

Each pair explores what co-authorship, collaboration and friendship mean – something made all the more overt given the “hyper-individualism” of our time, “especially within the arts,” 2ly says. “We’re trying to find a way to talk about friendship and love that feels true to us. It is both critical and playful, serious and a bit whimsical – our connection is what sustains us!” Through this correspondence, each creative’s individual voice is somewhat sidelined in favour of a common tone. “Even loved ones who read the letters can’t differentiate the writing,” they say. “We all prefer creating under a shared authorship; for us, thinking of ourselves as a collective rather than as individuals is a strength.”

The letters capture a fascinating insight into personal, expressive narratives and how they can develop into something unexpected. In merging fiction, documentation, writing and design together, and their collective being is organically formed. “All of our work is shaped by reciprocity,” the group says. “The writing gains intertextual relationships quite naturally,” shaped through each character’s interests, intrigues, experiences and internet rabbit holes. “Often we are four hands sitting in front of the screen,” 2ly adds, “playing with ideas and ephemera we collected.”

Aesthetically, 2ly have turned towards “varying themes of ornamentation and maximalist design”, drawing on graphic cues from 18th-century letters – a period considered the golden age of letter writing. In reimagining, remixing and subverting the “florid, romantic, cut-and-paste” expressions of the period, 2ly recontextualises the form within a contemporary setting. “These letters give us space to play: we design them fast and intuitively,” 2ly says. They opt for a more loose, emotive way of working, turning to typography inspired by their mutual love for literature. 

While the design is without restriction, the Riso printing of the letters offers clear limitations from the get-go. “The entirety of each letter must be laid out on a double sided A3 print file and use two colours only,” 2ly explains. “Within this limitation, the format is totally free, so it can be a single A3 sheet or lots of little sheets and anything in-between.” Chromatically, the chosen colours for each correspondence create a daisy chain, with each taking one colour from the last. “The aesthetics and narrative choices are ultimately a result of us playing around within the limitations of the print medium,” they add, turning the act of designing into something ultimately instinctual and less precious. “It means we can take more visual risks as we don’t feel in total control of the final image.”

With several months left to go, 2ly’s correspondence is clearly having an impact – it challenges individualism and limited attention spans through a kind, nurturing form. “Writing a letter is a moment of reflection that is not only rooted in an I, it is an exercise in preserving time for someone you love,” the group ends. “It is not about the I (the designer), but about the preservation of something that is situated in between the me and you.”