We are happy to announce a call for artists for another Wrapping Paper Edition for 2024!
Artists from western Mass and southern Vermont are invited to submit designs and proposals for wrapping paper pages from now until the September 1 deadline.
How to Apply
Please review the image requirements and hints about designing for newsprint.
Artists and designers may submit up to three design concepts before the September 1 deadline. This year we have an online, Google submission form available here: tinyurl.com/more-wrap. If you can’t use the online form, please send your name, address, phone number, and up to three images for a unique wrapping paper page, to features@montaguereporter.org with “Wrap” in the subject line.
We have a separate Youth category for artists who are 15 years old or younger, and will select at least one finalist from this group.
Artist Selection and design process
Selected artists will be contacted on Monday, September 16. You will then have the rest of September and October to get your design finished.
We will give each artist the space of two full adjacent pages for their design, making a double page measuring approximately 20 by 22 inches. Artists may design in full color or in black and white, and we’d love to get proposals from tattoo artists, comic illustrators, graffiti specialists, painters, street sketchers, kids, photographers, geometry nerds, type designers – all are encouraged to send us ideas for cool, original wrapping paper pages!
Remember to review the design guidelines before completing your design.
Once again we are able to offer a $200 stipend to each of seven chosen artists, thanks to the generosity of anonymous donors. Each will also receive five copies of the Wrapping Paper Edition for their personal use.
A little backstory to our wrapping paper issue
People have probably been wrapping up presents in the very attractive pages of our eye-catching little newspaper for many years. In 2020, we decided to make those packages look even cooler by inviting seven local artists to design pages to be used exclusively as recyclable and unique wrapping paper. The project also became a fundraiser for our little independent, non-profit newspaper.
During Thanksgiving week, when we normally skip publication, we printed the Wrapping Paper Edition. Thanks to sales of this special issue, we were able to raise nearly $4,000 toward the newspaper’s operation. In 2022, we also produced a Wrapping Paper Edition just before the holiday gift-giving season, and we were able to raise $2,200, which was less than the pandemic year sales, but still significant. In 2023, the Wrapping Paper Edition brought in $3300.
Sales of our Wrapping Paper Edition will be available between Thanksgiving and the end of December, in local stores and online, at the special price of $5 each or five for $20.
Questions?
For more information about the project, please contact Nina Rossi at (413) 834-8800 or features@montaguereporter.org.
If you are a shop or business owner who would like to sell copies of the Wrapping Paper Edition, please get in touch with Garth Shaneyfelt at garth@montaguereporter.org.
Here are some of the designs from past years
