What is a greeting card and why do people buy them?

Basically a greetings card is a way to communicate a sentiment.

There is varying levels of sentiment to be catered for and varied different relationships to be taken into consideration and also many types of occasions to be covered from general birthday cards to the strange and sublime.

People like to send greeting cards for all sorts of reason depending on the occasion and the relationship they have with each person in their life so clearly the scope for greeting cards is massive.

To fully understand why people send greeting cards one must think of ones own needs and apply it to ones own relationships, only then can you clearly see how different and diverse peoples needs or wants can be.

An example from my own family

My nana whom is sadly not with us anymore, at eighteen years of age she was an avid swimmer, this led her into a career working in a circus where she would climb onto a platform high up in the circus tent and dive into a small pool of water wearing what we now know to be a Speedo swimsuit, in those times wearing a swimsuit was actually more daring than her high diving act.
In her senior years she would recall those days fondly to anyone that was listening and I as a small child heard the story many times and was never sorry to hear it again.

So of course when it was her birthday or Christmas I used to look for something to do with the circus or with a picture of someone wearing a swimsuit in refection of times gone by, I'd also look for something that said ” To my Nana “ which of course I could never find and would generally settle for something like “ To my Grandmother “ which she didn’t like, then lastly to add insult to injury I would be looking for words inside that were amusing and not slushy, which was quite impossible as anything that said “ To my Grandmother “ on the front the card would generally ramble on inside about devotion and love, baking cakes or wearing slippers and was never really what I wanted.

I just thought I’d point this out as this is how peoples brains work when they are looking for a greetings card - of course my story is extreme but not that extreme people are always convinced that it is possible to get exactly what they want from the local shop and are often astonished when they find they can’t.

For myself I realised that if I found a picture on the front I liked I could write
whatever I wanted inside.

So for the sake of the masses most greeting cards are themed around popular occasions, birthday, anniversary, baby boy and baby girl cards, the list is endless but of course most publishers will research what occasions they will sell the most of and concentrate on those.

What people do spend a massive amount of time doing is reading the words inside greetings cards in an attempt to find something they are happy is relevant to what they want to say, and something that they feel the person receiving the card will like, maybe funny or be touched by the message.

People look for a greeting card that is relevant to the occasion. e.g. Birthday card

Next they look at the front of the card for relevance e.g. Birthday cakes, balloons etc.

Lastly they look inside to see what the words say, and here lies the real reason why people buy greetings cards, the message inside will determine whether the card gets purchased or stuffed back into the rack, a greetings card is purchased for the sole reason of 'to express an emotion of the buyer of the card to the receiver of the greetings card' whether that emotion is realised by either of the individuals or not is another subject!

Once chosen they may look at the price, however this is no longer an issue, the purchase from this point on is purely emotionally driven, it will not be until sometime later that they will moan to whoever will listen about how much it has cost them!

Card Making Designs

Card Making and Rocket Science

'What the Craft industry doesn't want you to know'


You would think card making and rocket science have nothing in common.

Rocket science is organised, structured and lead by experts, greeting card making on the other hand is disorganised, totally unstructured and in the most part led by self serving pigs at the trough!

Let me explain the pigs at the trough bit, just who is it that provides all the card making ideas? Could it be craft magazines, the retailers and wholesalers of craft products or is it the so called guru card designers employed by the former to sell the merchandise, bottom line, all the people involved in these industries don’t really want you to make or design greetings cards, they don’t want you to make a useful, elegant, fit for the purpose greetings card, oh no!..... What they REALLY want is for you to PLASTER AS MUCH OF THEIR CRAFT CRAP ALL OVER YOUR CARDS as possible!

Let’s get something straight, craft suppliers and magazines are only in it for themselves, the more of their ‘made by the lowest bidder in China so called craft supplies’ you slap on your cards, the more of your cash they get, which brings us to the inevitable conclusion that craft suppliers et al are not to be trusted, if you really want ideas for card making, these guys should be the last place you look for them.

So how does one go about designing greetings cards? Well first you’d have to understand what Greetings cards are and what card making is all about, I’m not going to tell you that in this article, I’ll save that until next time, however I’ll tell you what card designing is not.

It’s not about putting so many embellishments on the card that you need a shoe box to send it, nor is it, covering the card blank with ripped up pieces of coloured scrapbooking papers. In no way does it involve putting old crisp bags in the oven to shrink them and use for card making, this last idea was actually published on a well known craft supplies web site, talk about the blind leading the blind! Coming up with this sort of idea provides a good insight into the mindset of people running the business, a subject I’ll come back to at a later date.


For card making ideas with a rocket science approach plus information about how to sell your handmade cards visit www.card-making-crafts.com

To hear the truth about why the craft supplies industry sucks bookmark this blog