Holiday greetings and personal announcements have long given rise to inventive side projects for graphic designers. Jack Roberts, of the 1960s Los Angeles design powerhouse Carson/Roberts, was especially well-known for these (one of his Christmas cards made it into an AIGA annual). Roberts was profiled in the January/February Communication Arts, which describes an off-the-wall sensibility and rampant creativity that makes the firm sound like the Crispin Porter + Bogusky of the ’60s.
Carson/Roberts conducted a campaign to encourage the Brooklyn Dodgers to move to Los Angeles. The agency ran ads in all the national league cities, “Good luck team next year in Los Angeles.” Every day it rained in Brooklyn, C/R ran an ad in the New York Times the next day that said, “Dear Mr. O’Malley, we had baseball weather in Los Angeles yesterday.”
Below is the whimsically illustrated birth announcement which was sent to his mailing list (including Henry Wolf) in 1950. It is printed on a tri-fold, where newborn Stephanie’s feet are illustrated on a cutout tab that goes through the front flap. Archived in the Wolf correspondence, Series 7, Box 27, filed under “Roberts.”