In 2015 Amy set up Mark+Fold, bringing together a number of threads — a very personal love of good stationery, professional experience in print production, and an ambition to create a brand with integrity.
FOUNDER AMY COOPER-WRIGHT
A stationery lover from a very young age, Amy was inspired by weekends spent in her parents' architecture studio in London's Covent Garden, and has been collecting notebooks and journals for over thirty years.
After graduating from Oxford, she returned to London and worked in a series of creative roles, from information design to luxury branding, gaining a wealth of knowledge about print and binding techniques. It was whilst designing coffee table books for art galleries that she began to daydream about how the techniques used in art publications could be applied to a design-led stationery brand.
Amy studied part-time alongside her day job, and completed an MA in Graphic Design, focused on white paper. This 100 White Papers project eventually led to the selection of papers used in Mark+Fold products. It was also during her time at University of the Arts London that she discovered the writings of Kenya Hara. Suddenly, the childhood obsession with stationery had a grounding in academic thought, and Hara's philosophy on designing 'empty vessels' into which people project their ambitions and dreams, became a founding principle of Mark+Fold.
It was whilst on maternity leave, away from a conventional work environment, that many of these ideas were allowed to percolate. Early in 2015, she began to formulate the concept of Mark+Fold and build a community on Instagram, to connect with other stationery fans and try out early concepts. Having always loved the hum of noisy, messy machines, she drove the length of the country to visit printers and binderies who shared her perfectionism and attention to detail. After six months of prototyping and refinement, the first range was launched in November 2015, both online and in our first stockist, menswear designer Oliver Spencer.
Mark+Fold has been an incredible opportunity to build a business around a very personal passion. Amy has been privileged to collaborate with some of the industry's most inspiring creative women, from Margo Selby, to Karen Leck at Bamford and Isabel Ettedgui at Connolly.
Over the years, Amy's commitment to provenance and transparency have become increasingly important. What started as a desire to share the beautiful stories of the making process, has become a more focused ambition to set an example for brands of all industries. Her hope is that in being transparent, we can encourage customers to ask more questions and make more informed decisions, about all the products we buy and the businesses we choose to support.