Hello! My name is Ethan Hulbert and I’ve been collecting security envelopes for their various interior patterns for a number of years now.
(Do you have some security envelope patterns that I don’t have on my site? I would be very excited for you to get in touch! Email works best, or you can try my Instagram, but I’ve found a lot of Instagram DMs get sent to spam without notifying me.)
Security envelope ornamentation is beautiful. It is valuable art and a part of our culture that we take for granted. Well, I don’t take it for granted.
These patterns exist for one reason: banks and government offices didn’t want anyone to be able to hold up an envelope to the light and read your account number. From that problem came a wealth of artistic solutions.
I mean, think about it. We could have just settled on one single pattern. We could have been done with it forever. There is no true functional reason why we need so many, in such a variety.
And yet we have them. We made them. Because we humans are naturally inspired to place art into even the smallest, the most mundane locations, to fill our lives with joy wherever we can get it. In a way, security envelope art gives me a little extra faith in humanity.
And yet nobody signs this work. Nobody puts it in a portfolio. It gets printed off by the millions on some industrial press and sneaks beneath the radar of even the most critical eyes.
But once you start noticing it, it’s hard to stop.
Sure, I’m not going to pretend that security envelopes are some massive overlooked chapter of art history, that it needs to be included in the textbooks next to Van Gogh and Picasso. (Although…….)
I do, however, think that it’s a special and underappreciated–and real–genre of art that deserves more attention.
Most of this art will end up in a landfill. It’s my pleasure to save and analyze a little fraction of it.
I have put a lot of thought into categorizing these patterns, and have formed a good working theory on a spectrum that ties them all together. Obviously you can group the mesh grids together, you can group the “twisties” as I call them together; the text-focused envelopes bridge nicely to the brand-forward envelopes, which then fade into logos instead of text. There are, however, a few outliers, and I consider those to be some of the most interesting pieces of all.
I have a special tag for what I consider to be collection highlights. I also have a tag for all the branded security envelopes.
Please enjoy my archive and look forward to further updates.
Legal
Although I don’t own the rights to any of these patterns, I did take all the photographs and am responsible for the curation. You’re welcome to use these resources for your own projects within the bounds of the law, but I’d love it if you’d credit me and let me know about what you’re working on! I’d love to see.
Usage of these images to train any sort of generative AI model is prohibited where illegal, and where it is legal, it’s strictly subject to my website terms of use.
Website background subtle pattern credit: Transparent Textures.
Links to Related Resources
As I build out this section, I plan on giving these more description and better shout-outs. But for now, these are just my quick notes on links to other security envelope art sites or related artists. I am not claiming to be the first or the only person out there with an interest in this field, after all–it’s important to recognize the rest.