The complexity behind greeting cards

While traditionally cards have been sent to connect on seasonal occasions, such as Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Easter, today there are cards for every relationship, every occasion, every ethnicity, every age group, every gender and every special interest group. Giving people cards is a chance to say something one wouldn't normally say to someone.

Australian consumers have a diverse range of tastes and preferences, with a lot still focused on traditional designs. With that in mind, we work with various card ranges, with diverse target audiences.

Some examples of different ranges of greeting cards that I have designed - varying from contemporary, traditional and ‘‘daggy’’ style. Sometimes we instinctively want to design what ‘‘looks good’’, but we have to pause and ask ourselves - what kind of customer are we designing for within this range? - and that’s why we have to tone down and go for daggy.
(Daggy is a very used work in this industry, but in case you’re not familiar with it, here’s a quick description: perceived to be unfashionable, old or worn out;)

Design Group Australia
www.igdesigngroup.com.au

Role: Graphic Designer
Year: 2024
Design Group Australia is a fast growing, wholesale supplier of general merchandise to leading national retail brands and independent retailers. Think greeting cards, gift wrap, party supplies and giftware to name a few. As a design lead business, my role involved executing creative design solutions from concept to finished product across a wide range of products and merchandise, ensuring high quality and efficiency standards in both digital and print assets, aligned with a mass market targeted audience.
Within my role, I showcased creative problem-solving delivering captivating designs, earning recognition from management for consistently high-quality design solutions. As a designer, I worked closely with an interdisciplinary team from across different product and marketing departments, as well as following strict brand guidelines from License products such as Disney, Marvel, and etc, managing multiple complex design briefs and projects across a spectrum of products. My work included a comprehensive knowledge of Finished Art, often working with processing external printing assets, ensuring accurate printing quality standards and file management before is sent to the production factory.

Treatments & Finished Art

Still in the stage of the design concept of the card, as designers, we also need to plan ‘’special finishes’’ that will stand out and give a lasting impression on potential customers when choosing a card. The options will vary with the range of the card, which takes into consideration the pricing of each. That also includes some colour limitations, with the inside of the card being either full CMYK, all black or tints of one PMS (Pantone) colour.

To name a few, we can add embossing, which creates a raised impression, die-cut, which lies in cutting irregular shapes in paper, special attachments, such as differently shaped gems, ribbons and other crafty materials, tip-ons, creating a 3D effect of an element, usually a tittle or a character, and lastly the most used: foils. With a catalogue book of foils to choose from, they add a touch of sophisticated shine, mostly in gold, silver or clear, with patterns, solid colour or holographic effects.

PREPRESS

After a concept is approved, it is part of the designer's role to set the file ready for printing. This stage involves tasks such as file preparation, colour separation, proofing, and plate creation to ensure accurate and high-quality printing results. Each ‘’treatment’’ has to be prepared in separate layers of the artwork and applied to chosen spots (areas) of a printed piece.
This is a crucial step of the design process and requires a lot of attention to detail, as we verify the accuracy, colour, and quality of the final printed output before mass production.