Nuts and Bolts: Artist Interview Lisa Crisafi
One of the many perks of being a GCU Design Challenge winner is an interview. These mini-interviews are fun reads and a peek into the makings of the winning card.
GCU Community Manager
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Dash of Inspiration: Big Stock ONLY Design Challenge February 2018
The first Big Stock ONLY challenge of the year is here! We hope to INSPIRE you to fight through the learning curve and enjoy this different creative outlet. Perfect for creating greetings with subject matter you may not have or simply to add something a bit different to your current card offerings.
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Theme: First Mother’s Day
Requirements:
- ONLY Big Stock cards will be accepted in this challenge.
- New Mom is the focus of this challenge.
- Write your own verse, be creative with a message that ties the image you choose, the recipient and the category together.
- The judges will be looking for professional quality text layout, typography placement and font combinations in addition to a unique and captivating message that tells the story of the stock image you choose. Your added value needs to wow the judges!
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Entry Deadline: Wednesday, February 28th
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How to Enter: Post the PID (card number) and the URL (public storefront link – please WAIT for the card to be available in the public marketplace, please DO NOT post a link to your Manage Cards area) as a post in the challenge blog. We’ll forward your entry to the jury.
NOTE: Submissions will appear immediately in your Private gallery as they await review. If approved, the reviewer will move them to the public gallery – they will then become ‘live’ in the marketplace within 24-hours or so just like regular submissions. Be patient and wait.
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Category: Holidays > Mother’s Day Cards > 1st / First Mother’s Day
Note: Utilize the Notes to Reviewer field to include any helpful notes to the reviewer AND to indicate your intended category since you cannot select a category during submission.
Tip: Choose and work with an image that you feel a) fits with your vision and b) will meet GCU’s Submission Guidelines and c) is as good as or better than what’s being offered in the category of submission.
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Rules:
- Submission must meet GCU’s Submission Guidelines and be Approved through the usual Review Cycle. Big Stock creations are automatically identified as Fast Track – please add in the Notes to Reviewer: September Design Challenge Submission here is the link to the blog post: (include THIS blog post URL)
- Only ONE card per artist per challenge.
- Submissions must be NEW, no existing designs.
- Your entry must meet the Challenge Requirements and Theme or it will not be included in the challenge.
- Big Stock Card Creations ONLY will be accepted.
- Your designs should differ from those already offered in the categories above to offer shoppers a variety of choices, not more of the same.
- No BLANK cards will be accepted.
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BLIND Judging: We hope each of you enters every month! Entries are submitted anonymously for judging by the GCU Challenge Jury which means that before and during the challenge, judges do not have any way of knowing what artist is behind each entry. This eliminates any and all concerns with ‘favoritism’. Results will post on the Community Blog. The jury will judge the entries on the following criteria:
- How well the card meets the Challenge Requirements and Theme.
- How well the card speaks to the Category the artist chooses for the card submission.
- Creativity, Execution and Marketability. Your overall ‘added value’ determines this.
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Winners: 1st Place:
- The winning designer’s card and store will be featured on the GCU Public Blog – the blog which customers view and follow.
- As well as featured on the GCU Public Facebook Page – nearly 46,000 followers, now THAT’S exposure!
- The winning card will be Design of the Day following the announcement of the winners (within 48-hours).
- The winning card will be added to the Greeting Card Universe Design Challenge Winners Pinterest Board – currently GCU’s Pinterest Page followers: 2K!
- Winning card will be included in a marketing email to over 100,000 customers!
- GCU will create a Meet the Team board for the winning artist under the Pinterest GCU account where the winning artist will be able to pin and promote her own storefront and all that makes them a unique card designer and one of GCU’s artistic community team member.
- Winning card will be posted on GCU’s Instagram with 2,000 followers and counting!
2nd Place:
- Your submission will be Design of the Day the following week of announcing the Challenge winners (within 7-days).
- Your card will be added to the Greeting Card Universe Design Challenge Winners Pinterest Board.
- Winning card will be included in a marketing email to over 100,000 customers!
- Winning card will be posted on GCU’s Instagram with 2,000 followers and counting!
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Tips:
Visit all the available tips, tricks and guidelines offered on the Big Stock Creation blog page!
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Wanted New Cards: Away at College.
We’d like you to create at least one card for these categories using the Stock Cards function (Bigstock) or your own graphic designs.
Remember, when you’re submitting your new card, add a little note about the intended category in your Notes to Reviewers. Be inventive, be clever, be creative. Go for it!
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Freebie Wednesday: Spirited Font
Freebie Wednesday:
Spirited Font Set is a hand-drawn typeface set including six lovingly hand-made fonts. It was created by Sam Parrett from Set Sail Studios. Each font has been carefully designed to work in harmony with each other, allowing you to create beautiful and professional looking typography in a flash.
With a very distinct retro style, this font set is perfect for creating hand-lettered quotes, logos and printed designs with a rustic, personal touch. Also included is a bonus swash font, consisting of 10 various swashes and shapes designed to give your text that extra touch of detail & attention. The font set comes with free commerscial license.
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Nuts and Bolts: Storewide Facelift
The only way I had the confidence that EVERY card would be reviewed was to set the view to Tile in my Manage Cards areas and then work on them within each of the major categories: Announcements, Birthday, Business, Collections, Holidays, Invitations, Occasions – working in one section at a time and in order, so as to not miss a card. Each card was opened, checked and the following adjustments were made as needed:
– Unique and descriptive without truncating to a second line when possible.
– No dashes, slashes or characters.
– Proper capitalization.
– Recipient(s) and Occasion was depicted with relationship specific identifier showing first.
– If blank “Blank All Occasion” text added.
– The word “CARD” was removed as GCU automatically adds this to all titles.
– If the card had a Photo area – “Custom Photo” text was added or Custom if only card front text was editable.
– Colors and descriptive words for the artwork were included.
– Recipient(s) and Occasion text included.
– Each keyword or keyword phrase separated by a comma and a space, avoiding repetitive wording.
Artist Notes (Card Description):
– Each written to register GREEN in the uniqueness factor. Remember this is key with the new SEO requirements. If your cards indicate RED “Not Unique: Not eligible for Google indexing.” This means your cards have most likely stop selling at the rate they used to due to no longer being indexed by Google; therefore your cards are not being found by shoppers when searched for outside of GCU. Green is the goal, sometimes with large series, I accepted yellow on a few.
-For those cards of mine where I wanted to offer credit to the 3rd party creative and it was a large enough series to cause this mention of credit to skew the uniqueness factor from improving, I placed the credit in the Image By field and removed it from the description.
Inside the Card:
The inside and/or Custom Tool areas were checked on every card as well.
– Ellipsis were checked to make sure they were a) needed, b) properly spaced and c) properly continued from card front to verse area.
– Font size, choice and color were re-reviewed for legibility and professionalism.
– Extra spacing was removed and replaced with proper Message Alignment, Vertical Alignment and Line Spacing choices.
– Looked for proper punctuation and capitalization in verses.
Custom Front Cards:
– Text boxes did not touch each other, fall on or over the yellow safety line and did not overlay elements in my design which may make the customer’s text illegible.
– Photo card areas were just a pinch outside the transparent area I created for the customer’s photo, were not on or over the yellow safety line and did not touch each other if there were more than one.
-Custom text did not truncate or have extenders touching the text box.
Imagery and Typography:
Considering I joined GCU in 2009 and it was my first time creating greeting cards, I had hundreds of old cards which in addition to all of the above, really needed face-lifts – so each card was reviewed and updated when necessary for the following:
– Poorly placed or illegible card front text and/or bad font choices.
– The awful out-dated beveling effects were removed on both text, framing, borders and elements.
– Edge allowances checked.
– Imagery was spot checked and had color/contrast/saturation improvements as needed.
– Then made the same image/typography updates to all cards of the series when applicable.
The results of my efforts have already proved to be amazing. Every day I see those old cards coming through in sales notifications shortly after adjustments were made, indicating not only were the cards looking more professional, but that my meta-tag data was working!
See some of the differences below.
PID 656976 – My Santa painting itself had more detail pulled out and was then framed in a window environment with ‘snow drifts’ for the text placement. Font choice improved and all the ugly beveling gone, gone, gone!
I hope this inspires other artists to do the same!
GCU NOTES: these are all requirements, tips and tricks that have been shared on the blog, in the Submission Guidelines and in the review team’s toolkit as feedback for artists.
Here is a helpful read on Edit or New Submission and a related read about card editing by GCU artist Stephanie Laird.
Amazing job, Doreen! Impressive work and fortitude. Certainly a labor of love. Perhaps a good resolution for other artists to take on for 2018.
GCU Community Manager
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Wanted New Cards: Welcome to our Parish.
We’d like you to create at least one card for these categories using the Stock Cards function (Bigstock) or your own graphic designs.
Remember, when you’re submitting your new card, add a little note about the intended category in your Notes to Reviewers. Be inventive, be clever, be creative. Go for it!
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Freebie Wednesday: Arcanista Typeface
Freebie Wednesday:
The Hungry JPEG has a great freebie to add to your font collection. Arcanista by Victor Tramontin is a creative font and can be used in personal or commercial projects.
This font is of course free for commercial use.
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Rainbow Connection: Yummy Color Schemes
Dash of Inspiration: 2017 Founders’ Choice Awards
1. Best New Artist:Kathleen Johnson of Encouragers for Christ
Honorable Mentions for Best New Artists go to:
Doug Hill of Laughing Hippo Studio
and Stephie McCarthy
2. Best Overall New Card: Kathleen Johnson of Encouragers for Christ – PID 1477236
Honorable Mentions Hottest Seller: Mindy Pierce – PID 1496890
5. Best Custom Front Card (Image): 
7. Funniest Card: 
Honorable Mention Funniest Card: Pattiann Malynn Designs – PID 1463984
Honorable Mention Most Creative Stock Card BigStock: Stacia Gorge of Good Things by Gorge – PID 1503716
9. Rising Star: 
Honorable Mention Rising Star: Danielle Duckery of Greetings by Ms. Danielle – PID 1494966
10. Custom Request – Nailed it: Barbara Schreiber – PID 1485908
11. Best Uncommon Card: 
Honorable Mention Best Uncommon Card: Sandra Rose Designs – PID 1476276
12. Best Design Challenge Submission: 
Honorable Mention Best Design Challenge Submission: Pamela Jorgensen of PamJArts – PID 1475894
13. Simply Clever: 
Honorable Mention Simply Clever: LDG of Blue Girl Graphics Mercado PID 1501822
14. Reviewers’ Choice: Fiona, Reviewer #825 – Colleen Kong-Savage of Konga Line – PID 1506722
Ella, Reviewer #758 – Barbara Schreiber – PID 1494960
Mackenzie, Reviewer #528 – Ron Magnes of Creative Greetings – PID 1503302
Desiree, Reviewer #121 – Kathleen Johnson of Encouragers for Christ – PID 1478072
Phoebe, Reviewer #443 – Christie Black Creations from the Heart – PID 1481934
John, Reviewer #233 – Betsy Bush of Birthday Cards Café – PID 1471090
Catherine, Reviewer #871 – Annie Lang – PID 1475132
GCU Community Manager
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Wanted New Cards: Birth Mom / Dad Valentine’s
We’d like you to create at least one card for these categories using the Stock Cards function (Bigstock) or your own graphic designs.
Remember, when you’re submitting your new card, add a little note about the intended category in your Notes to Reviewers. Be inventive, be clever, be creative. Go for it!
GCU Community 