We are Jamie Atherton and Jeremy Lin, an English boy and an American boy who fell in love 12 years ago. These days we live in London, although we used to live in San Francisco. Together, we are Atherton Lin. We make stationery products that tell a story.
In our approach to stationery, we decided to avoid typical messages. We thought about the charmingly “wrong” use of language in cute Japanese stationery, and how these mysterious misnomers are often more evocative than the forced sentiments of commercially-driven greetings cards. We felt this liberated us to be as personal as we wanted, with the hope that even if our messages weren't the most obvious, they would somehow resonate. Hence, “The French Corduroy Suit” scenario could be the closest we get to Happy Valentine's Day, and the story of “The Broken Lucky Cat” might be construed as an idiosyncratic way of saying Good Luck.
We set about creating the Atherton Lin world. At the centre is a nameless protagonist who climbs trees, makes field recordings, wears corduroy and writes letters. There is a fox in the snow and a badger who chases a balloon. There are trains and radios and mysterious buildings. There are long summer days indoors and imaginary adventures.
Around this time, Jamie was spending less time designing digitally and began experimenting instead with watercolour and ink. Combined with Jeremy's storytelling ideas (highly influenced by Dylan Thomas and the Peanuts comic strip), the results appeared unabashedly soft in contrast with current graphic trends. The cute aesthetic is underscored by a sense of irony and melancholy. But it is always earnest. We keep close to The Smiths lyric, “It takes guts to be gentle and kind.”