Greeting Cards

Friday February 08, 2008 @ 09:07 AM (UTC)

I’m hardly the first to note the many failures of the greeting card market. If I were, we wouldn’t have someecards to amuse us. However, I think it’s worth noting my frustrations.

I am a person who writes a fair number of letters. Fewer than was the case when I rode the bus to work, or was regularly 5-10 minutes early to classes. However, I still write a few. To me, the physical artefact of a letter still means something. So I like noting events with cards. However, I like, you know, writing in them. Which means, of course, that my first problem with cards is not uncommon:
1. Dear cardmakers, shut the heck up (and cool it with the lace.) Since the mid-90s or so, the market has opened up such that cards which are simple in wording (“Happy Birthday!” “Congrats!”) do exist, and cards with more attractive aesthetics than “a doily on every square inch” also exist. However, they don’t prevail, and they’re not the default. If you’re browsing a small collection, or in a hurry, good luck1.

2. Check your social assumptions if you want to make money. Now, I’ve heard rumors that Hallmark has started making same-sex marriage congrats cards, but I haven’t seen them. And the assumptions go deeper than that. To put it coarsely, 80% of the marriage cards in the market cause unbearable cognitive dissonance in the mind of a divorced prospective purchaser. Even those who do heed #1 and keep themselves to a sentence tend to drip with Patriarchal and romance-cultic assumptions I find toxic. And let’s not even get into gendered birthday cards. You don’t have to make actively pinko feminist cards to please me. You just need to have options. They’ll sell.

Related to both previous points, 3. Stock a greater variety of card messages. I was recently at a gift shop, trying to pick up a Congrats card for a friend who won an amazingly huge poetry prize Of Awesomeness. 65% Birthday cards (of which 50% specify the relationship on the cover, for Extra Glurge and Extra Not Actually Requiring Effort), 10% Wedding, 10% Wedding Anniversary, 10% Baby, 3% Sympathy (all ugly as sin, and glurgey), and 2% Get Well Soon. I could have used a birthday card for a specific, non-pooky friend (that, I found.) I WANTED a congrats card. I could have used sympathy and get-well cards to replenish my supplies at home. But I bought none, because they had such a paucity that overwordiness and aesthetic horror were almost a given. Look, I know birthdays are the most common card occasion. But would it kill you to have one fewer rack of them? Maybe knock out the fourth ‘grandson’ title, and put a freakin’ congrats card?

The reason I think this relates to #2 is simple: demographics. A lot of my friends are writers. Most of those, and a huge segment of those remaining, are grad students. They are in a part of their life where they’re accomplishing great things. Many of them already have families, or aren’t going to have families for a while—baby cards need not apply. Many of them are already married, or aren’t getting married until they’re NEVER. Things I want to send cards about include graduating from grad school, getting nursing licenses, winning poetry prizes, having books published. Yeah, I can just write a letter, but having my friend open the envelope and see a big pretty “Congratulations!” rendered far more artistically than I can manage is fun. I’m sure the card industry, like every damn industry based on paper and post, is worried about the future. Well, I’m the future. I don’t look like June Cleaver and I don’t want to send the cards she did. Figure it out.

1 One great brand seems to be Recycled Paper Greetings which sadly has no working “where to get ‘em” software on their website. They offer, however, artists like Masha D’yans, who watercolors vibrant, whimsical cards that don’t have a lot of palaver. And whose site links to two online shops that carry her line. If only she had more congrats cards, this whole rant would disappear in a puff of logic.

Comments

I actually have the Masha D’yans cards that I picked up in Barnes and Noble. They’re blank inside, so I just use them for whatever. One of my recommenders actually liked the front of the card so much it’s on the wall in her office.

I agree! There’s room for the occasional funny birthday slogan with silly hats and all, but who wants to do that every time? Your options when buying cards seems to be either goofy, or saccharin!

I started making greeting cards to sell at the Saturday Market, and I concluded that my images could be used for almost any occasion if I just left the inside BLANK! Pretty pictures sell themselves. : )

Anyway, friends’ discount if you ever find yourself in a similar quandary again! : )

Heh! So noted! I miss the Market.

I admit my favoritest happy burfday and congrats cards are the ones that have said slogans calligraphed or otherwise drawn in big rainbow letters within. I don’t know why, it’s a thing I love :) Mebbe I should buy scads of blanks and break out my calligraphy pens…tho’ I’d have to buy gouache to get the rainbow.

Hey! Barnes and Noble, hmm? So noted…I think the singletons of hers I’ve bought before were from Target, tho’ it’s hard to recall.

I must respectfully disagree with your conclusions. I think the vast incompetence and unoriginality of the greeting card industry is one of its few lasting perks. It is moderately challenging to find a decent greeting card. Thus when someone receives a very good one, it means something special.

No, faith, my coz, wish not a good card from Hallmark.
God’s Peace, I would not lose so great an honour
As one decent card more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That cards which hath no originality or wit,
Let them multiply; their purchase orders shall be made
And crowns for Hallmark put on their backs:
We would not send greetings without their company
That show, by foil, how special our cards be.

Well, that went a strange direction.

Cheers!

Aww, that’s nice.

And relentlessly contrarian.

And a crime against Shakespeare.

I may have to burn you in tiny Kleenex effigy.

I may have to burn you in tiny Kleenex effigy.

Ah, that brings me back to the days when I installed a puppet government in the Great Northern and accidentally (I swear!) insulted that brawny Bounty god. Good times.

That was an inspiring post,

I hate the fact that it is becomming increasingly difficult to find a meaningful card instead of a joke card…

Anyway, thanks for the post

New comment

required, won't be displayed (but may be used for Gravatar)

optional

Don't type anything here unless you're an evil robot:


And especially don't type anything here:

Basic HTML (including links) is allowed, just don't try anything fishy. Your comment will be auto-formatted unless you use your own <p> tags for formatting. You're also welcome to use Textile.

Copyright © 2017 Felicity Shoulders. All rights reserved.
Powered by Thoth.