Ashleigh Brilliant: The OG of Memes

I first discovered the brilliant work of Ashleigh Brilliant in a faded red shoe box in a cluttered corner of Salt Lake City’s legendary Ken Sanders Rare Books. Lost among a towering table of thousands of postcards, once open, the box revealed a carefully curated collection of Brilliant’s work known as Pot Shots.

Begun in the 1970’s, Pot Shots is a playful, powerful, and often poignant epigram series that features single panel illustrations by Brilliant, all contained to and confined by the real estate restrictions of a traditional postcard.

As I sifted through the box’s content, I couldn’t help but laugh at the brutal honesty of Brilliant’s words and accompanying illustrations. Limited to a max of just 17 words each, the postcards ranged from sentimental and sweet to downright depressing, and I could imagine the box’s original owner carefully collecting the postcards over a period of months and years.

Brilliant’s work, which appears to be a clear precursor to the popular meme and e-card company Someecards, is impressive for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the breadth of the series, which he continued for decades, creating literally thousands of unique epigrams released across a variety of postcard sizes and colors.

Today we take for granted the ease at which we share our memes and how quickly a quip can spread in the hands of those of us who share. But for Brilliant, turning to the postcard was the fastest way to ensure his work could find its way from one person to another, and it’s fun to imagine someone opening up their mailbox in 1975 to find a gem like this:

So the next time you’re on Reddit or Twitter, and upvoting or sharing the latest meme, let’s not forget the words of Ashleigh Brilliant:

“It was all so different before everything changed.”