Seasonal greetings get cheeky and subversive
In vibrant type, on card stock sometimes thick enough to hold up to teeth marks, are printed the types of things usually reserved for text messages (or some similarly ephemeral form of communication):
“I can’t wait to sob uncontrollably at your wedding!” “You’re so gangsta.” “Only a few more shopping days left until your loved ones find out how little you understand them.”
Whatever happened to a simple Season’s Greetings?
Over the last few years, as Happy Birthday wishes have funneled through Facebook and the kissy-face emoji has smacked across smartphone screens, a new breed of greeting cards has emerged, more cheeky than anything with a Hallmark stamp.
According to the Greeting Card Association, which tracks the sale of cards in the United States, 60 per cent of millennials have bought a greeting card in the last year.
While it does not report what brands different demographics are buying, the prints coming from upstarts like Offensive and Delightful, Emily McDowell Studio, Sapling Press and others are directly addressing this younger generation — or, at least, the Internet-irreverent, uninterested in boilerplate sentiments expressed in shiny script.
“Ninety per cent of all the cards are, ‘I love you, sunshine, sparkle, sparkle, unicorn,’” said Olga Krigman, a Los Angeles graphic designer who started Offensive & Delightful in 2005. “I just wanted a card that was like, ‘Ugh,’” — she added one of her favourite fourletter words for emphasis — “something that’s for me.”
True to her brand’s name, many of Krigman’s cards include profanity, which means that some stores stock them in a box behind the register. But Offensive and Delightful relies more on mixing the nostalgic with the here-and-now — Norman Rockwell-esque girls praising the holy trinity of “booze, boys and bffs” — than shock value.
“It’s a little bit of the old with a little bit of the subversive,” Krigman said.
Others subvert the notion of making a card for an occasion, printing non sequiturs and one-liners sourced from social media. Lisa Krowinski, founder of the five-year-old Pittsburgh company Sapling Press, favours a witty aside on the front and no message inside — as she put it, “a card to give someone for no reason other than to make them chuckle.”
Scrolling through Twitter and Instagram for inspiration sometimes leads to collaborations with people on those platforms, like comedian Josh Hara, who along with Krowinski came up with cards that read: “Middle age is mostly getting super excited about different flavours of hummus” and “‘You know who wants to hear your opinion about everything? EVERYONE.’ — Alcohol.”
“We’ve had some shops contact us, like, ‘Why would you send that to somebody? What’s the purpose?’” Krowinski said (dubiousness aside, more 700 stores carry her cards). “It could be for anything. We hope that you purchase a card, it makes somebody laugh and inside what you’re saying is, ‘Best of luck on whatever it is you’re going through,’ versus Hallmark, there is a long paragraph that’s meant to tug the heartstrings and you just sign your name.”
Many cards try to acknowledge the inexpressible, like relationships that defy standard definitions.
In 2012, Los Angeles graphic designer Emily McDowell created a Valentine’s Day greeting that reads like a text message desperate to be unsent: “I know we’re not, like, together or anything but it felt weird to just not say anything so I got you this card. It’s not a big deal. It doesn’t really mean anything. There isn’t even a heart on it. So basically it’s a card saying hi. Forget it.”
Etsy featured the card on its Facebook page, and McDowell sold 1,700 in one week. She now produces a lot of cards like that.
“It’s cards for the relationships that we have and not what we wish we had,” she said.