A Paper Moon Christmas

The Ultimate in Vintage Holiday Cards

“Paper Moon, a mere slip of a card company, has swept the country and parts of Europe like stardust.” – GQ, February 1979

Launched in 1977, Paper Moon Graphics was a totally new approach to the humdrum and staid world of greeting cards—so novel in fact that a whole “new wave” of paper goods followed in its wake. The PMG style—described by their first art director Roger Carpenter as “cutting edge, mostly pop culture, ‘Southern California’ airbrush illustration—drew from all that was hip and underground and young. Below I explore the company’s history and gather together the single biggest Xmas Paper Moon collection on the internet.

In the early days, it was reported that Paper Moon was started by “a secretive young lady, Moonlighting Linda,” who made the press promise not to print her real name and a silent partner. In fact, the company was founded by Linda Barton, the artist Brad Benedict, and “self-described ‘bored attorney’” Fred Zax (likely the so-called “silent partner”). Reaching out to artists, the team first took previously made editorial and advertising graphics and adapted them (sometimes with new typography) into greeting cards. Paper Moon was an immediate sell-out when they brought their new line of ninety cards to the Los Angeles Gift Show. “It was spooky,” Zax recalled. “We were caught by surprise.”

“Yule-Tide” by Deborah Ross, 1979.

The early Paper Moon designs were a retro explosion of kitsch—when Linda was asked about her favorites, she described them as “the ones with subliminal, cultural messages, those with Forties and Fifties nostalgia and the Art Deco and Americana designs.”