Several weeks ago my friend Elmine wrote about a notepad emblazoned with Brilliant Ideas, in part:

None of the ideas I wrote down were brilliant. That’s because the branding of this note pad is totally wrong. Ideas are never brilliant. It’s a thing I have to keep reminding myself of every single working day. The brilliance is in the execution.

I was struck by how right she was, and decided to commemorate this in letterpress, creating a “brilliance lies in execution” notepad for Elmine.

The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and my audacious decision to make this a two-colour job failed, with the colour registration all over the place, due a combination of floppy paper, high humidity, and my own inexperience:

After trying my best at this, I realized it was never going to work, and was left with a stack of notepad paper with only the black “brilliance lies in” imprinted.

And so I sent that to Elmine, reasoning, after the fact, it was far more appropriate to allow her to fill her own answer to that prompt, on a case by case basis.

With the type still at the ready, and red ink still on the press, I opted to execute, so to speak, with some lovely Clairefontaine Exacompta index cards (available at The Bookmark), all in red:

Perhaps brilliance lies in both execution and adaptability?