Lakay Graphics

Lakay Graphics is an Online store offering Unique Haitian T-Shirts, Sweatshirts, Mugs, Bags, Mousepads, Decorative Tiles, Calendars, Posters, Postage Stamps and other Gift items. We cater mostly to the Haitian Diaspora in North America and the Caribbean, but most of our products can be customized and personalized according to anyone’s taste or needs.

We offer some beautifully rendered Haitian Creole Greeting Cards. We also have them in English. Most of the Cards can be personalized by Adding your own Greeting and Name, or Recipient’s Name. If you want a Blank Card, you just erase the greeting example. On some of them, the Background or even the Design itself can be changed.

We also make Custom Cards to your own specifications, with pictures of your house, kids or pets. We can help you Create your own Family Brand of Greeting Cards and Postcards with your Family name, Motto, Coat of Arms, etc.

We offer Design Services for Promotional and Marketing needs: Logos, Ads, Posters, Menus, Signs, T-shirts, etc.

We are selling our design services through Zazzle and CafePress, two giants of the Print-on-Demand Industry. We like both Zazzle and CafePress, as each of them has different and interesting Products and Features. The Customization and Personalization features on Zazzle are exceptional. The Customer may Change the Background Color, Add Text & Pictures, Enlarge, Reduce or Reposition the Design. He can even Replace the Design with one of his own. This works very well with T-Shirts.

Lakay Graphics started as a Greeting Card making stunt. My cousin Roro and I (Tatán), were brainstorming ways we could combine our respective skills in Linguistics and Graphics to make a product designed with the Haitian consumer in mind. We came to realize that Creole Greeting Cards were the perfect medium for this purpose. We started immediately and designed a whole line of Christmas and Valentine’s Day cards in Haitian Creole. Most of them were Funny Cards. Only a few of those early cards have been published so far.

I (Tatán) was heavily into Screen Printing then. The first card I hand printed had a picture of a friend’s dog named Jessie. I believe it was water-based magenta ink on cream-colored textured card stock. (The design is available in our Birthday Cards and Pets Sections, to all the Shepherd owners and lovers.) Around that time, we were also working on some designs to be printed on Decorative Tiles, Book Covers, Keyrings, etc. But that project never took off. Here is an example of one of these early tile designs, next to the dog card. This was the red color separation.

Later on, Lakay Productions (this was the name we had registered in the State of New York) became a banner making endeavor. But, little by little, we started to switch our focus towards other activities, and before long the whole thing came to a grinding halt.

I came back to Graphic Design itself, two years ago. I started to devour Linux and Open Source Graphic Programs (Ubuntu, Knoppix, Kanotix, Inkscape, the Gimp, Krita, Quanta plus, Scribus, etc.)

I brushed up our old Greeting Cards and Tiles designs and began to work on some new and elaborate Haiti-oriented Text Only Designs which were offered on CafePress. This company was carrying many of the products we intended to offer initially, such as decorative tiles, mugs, keychains, greeting cards, clocks, etc. Later on, I joined Zazzle and they became the main outlet for my work.

But, I maintain a presence on CafePress because they offer some unique products. Moreover, I like their “browse by design” feature and the relative ease in setting up a hierarchy of sections and subsections many levels deep. It’s a breeze to move products around the store.

Roro and I got together again to work on our unfinished projects, but this time we mean business! (Pun definitely intended!) We are getting serious. We now have our own domain name: lakay-graphics.com with our own Blog: Bagay Lakay. We intend to turn these two sister sites into tremendous online resources for the Haitian community and anyone interested in Haiti and haitian culture. We are also active on Facebook, Twitter, Squidoo, etc.

Please contact us, your input is badly needed. We could use some well-minded collaborators and critics. This is more about Haiti and its image than anything or anybody else…

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