Can you share the story behind Love Loss Disco Balls? What inspired you to create this unique concept? Rachel has been an advocate for grief awareness and suicide prevention on social media for a little while now, sharing stories around the losses of her parents and her rst husband to suicide when she was pregnant with our little boy. Warren also understands how isolating grief can be a er losing his mum. We knew we wanted to create something meaningful together - and inspiration struck one day, as Rachel was writing an Instagram post about how depressing and out-of-date she found sympathy cards to be when she received them. Warren is a designer - with experience within the greetings card industry - so it just clicked. We extended our range to include support cards to encourage people to connect with friends going through di cult times, and we donate some of our pro ts to Campaign Against Living Miserably to further support in this area. We feel it’s both a wonderful tribute to the people we have lost, and something our son can be proud of as he grows up. e name "Love Loss Disco Balls" is so evocative. What does it represent for you, and how does it tie into the work you do? Our whole story is about love and loss, and we feel that our range of cards represent this too. e disco balls come in for a couple of reasons. We love the concept of a disco ball being lots of pieces of broken glass which have been put back together to form a magical ball of light, it’s a wonderful metaphor for the human spirit. No matter how broken we may be sometimes, we will always be beautiful. And the other reason is because we are big fans of house and disco music (Warren has a huge record collection and loves to DJ) – so we are very partial to having a dance underneath them too.
What was the moment you realised you could turn this idea into something meaningful for others? rough social media, we’ve connected with an incredible community, and what stands out the most is the abundance of love, light, and hope. Many people our age have experienced signi cant loss, yet the cards available simply aren’t designed with our generation in mind. When we tested the concept with people in our community, the encouragement we received was overwhelming, and it became clear there’s a real lack of relevant cards available. Signing our agreement with CALM was a truly special moment for us. eir full support of the idea of using cards to promote mental health and provide support was incredibly validating - it con rmed that what we’re doing is something much needed. How do you go about designing your bespoke cards? Is there a particular story or theme you like to explore? It always starts with the colours for us. We chose our colour palette before we even began the designs. Warren has a background in design, print and typography and has always loved the special uorescent inks that have to be used for the colours we have chosen. Our cards have to be printed on a special lithographic press as you can’t achieve the pop of the colours using a digital print. We knew this might be more of a challenge as we couldn’t print on demand, but this was always a positive for us. We feel it makes them more special and of the quality we were aiming to achieve
29 | LAUNCHPAD | SPRING 2025
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