Staff identity card
Lettre postal service · courier divisionNº 0001
- Name
- Pippin
- Post
- Courier, every route
- Species
- Pigeon
- Joined
- 2023
- Uniform
- Mailman's cap, letter bag
- Eyes
- Yellow, a slight madness
- Drawn by
- Arifin Shumonto
Signature of holder
Pippin,the bird who carries every letter.
He started as an internet joke, became a pencil sketch, and now flies every letter written in Lettre. This is his personnel file: how we raised him.
On Android? Fill in this short form and we'll write back the day Lettre lands there.
Request for Comments 1149
A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers
- Carrier
- One pigeon
- Payload
- A small scroll of paper
- Fastened with
- Duct tape, one leg
- Typical load
- 256 milligrams
- Collisions
- Avoided by the bird
- Service
- High delay, low throughput, low altitude
this one. this is us.
It beganas an April Fools' joke.
On April 1, 1990, the Internet Engineering Task Force published RFC 1149: a standard for sending internet data by pigeon. Print the data on a little scroll, tape it to the bird’s leg, let go. It promised “high delay, low throughput, and low altitude service.”
Everyone else read a joke. We read a mission statement. We wanted a mascot to tell Lettre’s story—someone to anchor our posts and add a little delight to the app’s small moments—and the bird that once carried the internet, slowly and on purpose, was the obvious hire.
First,a pencil and a pigeon.
Before Pippin had feathers, he had a job. Our first storyboards worked out what Lettre would be—an iPad, an Apple Pencil, a letter, an envelope—and who would carry it from one person to the next.
Teal, grey& a yellow eye.
We pinned up a real rock pigeon beside film stills full of warm, deadpan color, and drew him in between. The early Pippin was a sterner bird. The colors stuck: a teal neck, slate wings, pale blue bars, a rust letter bag and one very yellow eye.
Pippin's colors · issued 2023 · seven values
- Neck teal
- Cap blue
- Wing slate
- Bar blue
- Bag rust
- Eye gold
- Toe coral
Lettre postal service · courier issue
Two weeksfrom outline to Pippin.
Arifin Shumonto, a Studio Ghibli–influenced illustrator and animator from Bangladesh, styled Pippin over two weeks: rough outlines for his shape first, then the teal-grey-yellow palette. Decisions came fast, and the team agreed the moment they saw him—just the right amount of crazy, quirky and slightly overwhelmed.
For me, good character design is one with a well-defined silhouette. Once I was satisfied with the shapes, I delved into the details and colors.
There is actually a film titled “Spies in Disguise” produced by Blue Sky Studios, which featured fun looking pigeons. An interesting titbit about the studio is they were involved in the making of Ice Age movies. A lot of inspiration was taken from there.
The pigeon, often associated with conveying messages, resonates well with the concept of the slow-paced communication that Lettre.app embodies.
- a mailman's cap
- eyes: a slight madness
- the letter bag
- silhouette first, details after
StarringPippinas himself.
Two launch films, one leading pigeon. He did his own stunts, turned down a body double and asked to be paid in breadcrumbs. We said yes to all three.
Reel 1The original
Now showingLettre.app 1.0 Launch Video his big-screen debut
Watch on YouTubeReel 2The sequel
Now showingLettre.app 2.0 Launch Video | PenPals for life sequels are never better. this one is.
Watch on YouTube
The storieswe almost told.
Once Pippin existed, the lore started writing itself. Farshid Humayun, our social media illustrator, drew a simpler Pippin for posts, and we tried him in every situation we could think of. Some ideas were wilder than others.
Case 01
The crow
A letter-stealing crow, Pippin's sworn nemesis.
Case 02
The lab
Murky origins in a government lab breeding surveillance pigeons, and a daring escape.
Case 03
The cat
Some way, any way, to bring a cat into the canon.
the crow is still out there
He doesn't use GPS.He fliesby globe.
In his stories, Pippin finds his way with a little globe on a chain around his neck: the cozy way, not the beeping one. This is it. Every red line is a letter on its way somewhere. Spin it, tap a city to send Pippin there, or tap anywhere else to post a letter of your own.
DACIST
Now flying · Leg 12
Dhaka to Istanbul
Pippin's logbook
- PenPal letters posted
- 100,000+
- In the air each day
- A few thousand
- Letters carried, all told
- 2,000,000+
Routes drawn for illustration. Real letters are private, so their routes are too.