Hand-painted folded card with red foil. Each card has a unique abstract design. Paired with a patterned envelope.
Painted and foil stamped in our Iowa-based studio.
Card size: 4.25 x 5.5"
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MOGLEA BRAND: Chad and Meg Gleason met at Iowa State University while pursuing careers in furniture and graphic design, respectively. They fell in love and were married before their last year of college. They spent countless hours scheming about the possibility of working together someday. Sadly, the Great Recession had other plans (the year was 2008).
Instead of moving to NYC after graduation, they took the more promising opportunity to join Chad’s family’s farm business in Chad’s hometown—Audubon, Iowa. Chad worked with his father and brother on their grain and livestock farm, while Meg started a letterpress stationery business called Moglea in the basement of their farmhouse.
The Moglea name was created during a memorable car trip around Lake Michigan in 2009. The name mixes the GLEA from the Gleasons' last name and the M from Meg’s name. Initially, the name represented the letterpress stationery business. Still, Meg wanted the name to be very non-specific, ensuring the brand could incorporate any design object that the Gleasons created under the Moglea umbrella.
2012 Meg exhibited the first Moglea stationery line at the National Stationery Show. Meg sought to bring paper goods to the wholesale market, which used unique production processes that she hadn’t seen other lines using.
That first line used hand-applied paper collage, brightly colored hand-painted neon edges on super thick card stock, and cards dipped in Kool-Aid and natural dyes. The line was so successful that Moglea needed a larger studio outside the home.
Chad designed and helped build the first Moglea studio on the same property as their farmhouse in 2015. The studio was built adjacent to a river and on stilts to avoid any possible flooding.
Chad’s passion for designing furniture was reignited through the studio's design. He eventually exited the farm business to help design and direct Moglea in 2016. They aimed to create a line of furniture and other home goods under the Moglea name.
It is challenging for a design business to keep staff in a small town, so the Gleasons moved Moglea to Des Moines in 2018. Located at the west end of downtown Des Moines, the DSM studio contains all of Moglea's operations: design studio, wood prototype shop, pressroom, production studio, and fulfillment. Chad and Meg are still the creative directors of the line.
Moglea's artful stationery is created using hand-applied production processes to add unique elements to each product. The production team thoughtfully applies layers of paint to extra-thick sheets of paper before cutting them down, yielding unique compositions. Each piece is finished on one of their antique presses, where it is foil stamped, printed, or die-cut using traditional letterpress printing processes.
The Moglea line is a joyful exploration of composition, pattern, and color. For each new release, Chad and Meg intentionally focus on adding unexpected production processes or visual ideas to the current collection. The result is a product line in which each piece feels like a work of art meant to be shared.