Pixel Postcards from Stube Umlauts

In 2024, Julia and I founded a design studio: Stube Umlauts. A shared space for creative ideas, where over 30 pixel art postcards came to life. We sold them in shops around Leipzig and in bookstores across Germany. From working with retailers to filing tax returns for a partnership – we learned a lot along the way.

Now we’d like to focus on other projects, and in early 2026 we decided to stop printing and selling our postcards. But just stop and let the designs disappear into a drawer? That would be a shame! So I’m making 25 selected postcard designs freely available – to download, print, give away, and sell.

Print Your Own Postcards

All 25 designs are available here as print-ready PDFs with 3 mm bleed (and crop marks if needed). Send them to your trusted local or online print shop and have your favorite designs printed! If you’re unsure about paper, here’s the spec we used for our printed copies:

• Format: DIN A6 (10.5 × 14.8 cm / 4.1 × 5.8 in)
• Paper: 300 gsm Munken Pure Rough (or similar)
• Color: 4/4 full color (double-sided, digital print)

Looking Back: Just Ask

The idea for the postcards came about casually, like so many things with us. Julia and I often spend our evenings doing something creative – she draws and crafts, I code or push pixels. At some point we had a stack of designs and wondered: What if someone else liked them too?

There’s a handful of shops in Leipzig that we love escaping to. So one day we headed out and showed them some of our postcards. There was no business plan. Just a question about collaboration – whether they could imagine stocking our cards. At Weikert Studio Leipzig, Tschau Tschüssi, and Vielfach Leipzig, among others, they said: Yes!

One of Our First Stockists: Weikert Studio Leipzig

Weikert Studio in Leipzig is actually a shop for curated fashion, fragrances, and artisan goods. Stefan Weikert curates his selection with care. From our perspective, postcards were clearly missing from his offering – even though I wasn’t sure he could picture our colors and shapes in his store.

When we showed Stefan our cards, he loved the pixelated aesthetic right away. That our postcards found their place between merino wool and leather belts was a pleasant surprise – and proof that our designs can find a home anywhere.

Invited to the 2025 Spring Exhibition at feingemacht Halle

A special highlight was being selected for the 2025 spring exhibition at feingemacht in Halle (Saale). feingemacht is a shop and café for art and design – a place where regional creatives can exhibit and sell their work. New exhibitors are selected every six months.

We applied in late 2024 and were actually accepted. From February to June 2025, our postcards stood on a small rack between ceramics, prints, and jewelry. Being part of this curated space set off fireworks inside us.

Setting It All Free

Looking back, Stube Umlauts was exactly what it was meant to be: a small, time-limited space for shared creativity. Julia and I learned more through this project than we ever expected – about starting a business, about the courage to ask, and about letting go.

Rather than letting the designs simply disappear, I’m passing them on. All 25 postcard designs are released under the Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license. In practice, this means:

• You may print, share, and sell the cards.
• You may edit and remix the designs.
• The only condition: attribution – a credit to the creator (e.g. “Design: Johann Schopplich” or a link to byjohann.link).

If you print the cards, I’d love to hear about it. And if you sell them in a shop – even better!