Very Varyer Valentines
Gallery
We at Varyer are all about the good vibes: creating them, feeling them, and sharing them with others. At its best, Valentine's Day is the perfect opportunity to share good feelings with the people you like most. This year, we wanted to help you out by creating a few cards that are ready for your notes, professions, jokes, or any other memo for those you hold dear.
Here, our designers share their thoughts and inspirations on the cards they created.
♡♡♡ Download the valentines. ♡♡♡
Bianca Albino
I Love You So Much
When I think of Valentine’s day, the first word that comes to mind is SHAM. Everybody knows that the true Dia dos Namorados is June 12th: Saint Anthony’s day, the marriage saint. But that’s also just a stratagem of the businesspeople in Brazil, who noticed it was winter and people weren’t buying as much stuff. Regardless of the reason, this day reminds me a lot of the contortionisms involved in sharing your life romantically with people, and when I saw Peter Flötner's "Human Alphabet” on the Public Domain Review, I had to have it.
30 Dollars
Consumerism, tsc tsc, we all hate it. This one is for people who love to sit and eat candy together—something you can buy in bulk for less than thirty dollars and lasts you so long, more than most relationships. The lollipop portrayed is this one, a staple at my school in the year 2003.
YOU ARE CUTE <3
Everybody knows handmade things have value beyond measure, and that’s what I’m willing to hand out for free with my "YOU ARE CUTE <3" card. Just lots of digging into paper and erasing big blocks of pixels to make never-before-seen letters in front of a gushing, bloody-red background—the color of love. ❤️
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Becca Christman
My most memorable valentine came in the form of an iridescent Shrek-themed card from one of those plastic-y corrugated sheets you get from CVS—it featured a film still of Puss in Boots with the text “You SLAY Me, Valentine!” and it was given to me by my 5th grade teacher. I was still too young to see adults as “hot” (with one exception), but many of the school secretaries and mothers of my classmates gushed over this teacher’s curly hair and stunning smile, so receiving what I interpreted as a sexy valentine (Puss in Boots being a sensual figure in media at the time) from a heartthrob felt like such a huge deal that I hid the valentine in a mixture of shame and excitement.
The valentine, of course, had zero romantic undertones; I don’t think he even put any students’ names on his cards before carelessly dropping them into our Valentine’s Day mailboxes, blissfully unaware of the consequences. Every day I wonder what my life would have been like had I only received the valentine in the same set that read, “Can I Get a WHOOP, WHOOP?” I hope my valentines will elicit the same feelings from their recipients as the Shrek valentine did from me in 5th grade—shame laced with excitement—just as Catholicism's own Saint Valentine would have wanted. <3
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Adam Rodriguez
First-Sight Scrambles
If magnetism is caused by the motion of electric charges, could love also spur those exact same feelings? Science tells me that to become magnetized, another strongly magnetic substance must also enter the magnetic field of an existing magnet. Well, that makes sense (right?) . . . and earth is also one big magnet. So did the earth bring us together? Do you feel scrambled as well?
Love We Share
It's 2020 and we're dying to see each other again. You've been away for so long. It's comical how years can seem like minutes and minutes could seem like ages. Who's pulling the strings? (Could you pull them a bit faster?) Although we can only see each other virtually, I swear the butterfly filter isn't a filter, I can see them hovering around you, whispering and laughing in your ear. Although the outside world is red, ours is perfectly pink. Like you.
Love Shapes
It's 7 am somewhere in Indiana. Not many words are spoken around this time, nor does there need to be. The morning rain settles in to give us company, and I find it pairs quite well with our fresh coffee. I would describe what it smells like, but I can't smell and you know this. You describe it for me. Our pieces aren't always aligned but they somehow fit effortlessly. We only have until 3 to finish the puzzle. For now, I'll just enjoy the moment.
