Yesterday I went to the Spring Fair at the NEC, specifically to look at the greeting cards section.  I met a couple of customers who had stands, companies who ran off inkjet prints for those cards that they did not want to do by lithography, or where they sold prints as well as cards.

But what struck me about the cards:

1        The hand made cards were natty,

2        The wordy, hand drawn ones were amusing

3        The photographic ones were utterly boring.

And of course none of them carried the message “This is from me to you”

Good photos maybe, good popular subjects too - landscapes, wildlife, characters, well-known landmarks - but all filling the front totally and all of uniform sizes - usually 5x7 or 6x6 on rather bland litho card:

There is so much that can be done:

You knw what we do on  Greeting Cards - we started with A5 cards but now we have so many more sizes, paper types and folds.

Create the design: the photo can be framed with feathering, fading, line and text art - or selective highlighting.  I use dg Foto Art, but a specialised package such as Greeting Card Factory gives a lot of possibilities.

Use a good quality digital art paper.  My favourite is Innova Smooth white Cotton (IFA-15), but we have 58 papers to choose from.

Vary the size: panoramic, very tall or just something different.

Have a different fold: like our French Window double gate design - photos on the two side panels and inside face with a message on the inside panels - ideal for invitations - new home “Him” “Her” and “Come inside”.

That is where our “Photo Paper how you like it” comes in.  The choices may look overwhelming.  But if you want to be really creative, you need the choice.

Valentines Day, Mothers Day Easter plus a whole lot of weddings are coming up along with many festivals for our Asian friends.  Generate cards for them - for yourself or to sell.

And tell your friends at the camera club too. 

Good printing, good album making, good card making

Best wishes

Daniel Roberts

www.opusalbums.com

daniel@opusalbums.com