Blast From the Past: Designer’s Tips for Photo Cards

Here’s another Blast From the Past – an article from an August Newsletter that you may have missed. Enjoy!

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Designer’s Tips for Creating Photo Cards

Since Photo Cards are the hottest topic at GCU right now, with virtually every designer feverishly creating and uploading cards, I thought I’d talk about some of the  slightly more technical aspects to Photo Cards that you may not know.

The Bigger It Is, the Better It’s Liked: At a bare minimum, the photo area (this is the transparent spot where the shopper’s photo will go) should take up 1/4 of the card’s surface area. However, market research has shown that consumers prefer the purpose of the card to showcase their photo, not the artist’s work (which should enhance, rather than dominate). The bigger the space you leave for the shopper to fill, the happier they are. If possible, try to use at least 1/3 to 1/2 of the card’s surface for the photo area, if not more.

For the Purpose, Please: One of the worst things you can do is take an existing card design, and try to shoehorn a space out of it to make it a Photo Card. This does not work. In a lot of cases, it looks exactly like what it is: an afterthought. You’ll have much more success designing Photo Cards from the ground up.

Elementary, My Dear Artist: Again, we’re going back to that research thing. Shoppers love Photo Cards where an element of the design will interact with their photo (such as a frame with part of the flower detail coming over the photo). It looks cool, but you need to be careful of a couple of things. First, don’t let the element be too intrusive – that great whacking snowman you designed may look great, but if Frosty’s taking up half the photo area, that’s too much of a good thing. And second, always be aware that in general, when uploading their photo, shoppers will try to put their face in the center of the photo area; if the card is meant to be sent by a family or group, faces will be going across the length (or breadth) of the space, so never position an element that will obscure those smiles.

The Cutting Edge: At the moment, one of the hottest trends is the 100% Photo Card (that’s what I’m calling it)- meaning the shopper’s photo takes up the full 5×7 front of the card, with some kind of design element, such as a customizable text box, small banner, and/or discreet graphic somewhere that won’t interfere with the photo’s subject.

Now you’ve got a few tips to get started, or help you refine your existing plans. Go for it, and happy designing!