Critique Clinic – November 24-25, 2012
How does it work? For three days a week (Friday-Sunday midnight), I will open the clinic to any artist who wants an honest peer review and critique of a card which gets plenty of clicks but no sales, so something’s probably not quite right, or you’ve got a new design you want to test drive, or you’re unsure about the marketability of a card. Or perhaps you’re a newbie who isn’t sure if a recently submitted card is up to a marketable standard. Anyone is welcome to participate. In fact, I encourage everyone to at least look at the cards in question and read the critique comments – you may learn something. The purpose of the clinic is to help artists improve the commercial appeal and marketability of their cards.
THE RULES
- ONE card per artist only.
- Card must be for sale at Greeting Card Universe.
- We will take an unlimited number of artists, including those who have submitted recently, HOWEVER I reserve the right to close a clinic for the day if the submissions become overwhelming. If the clinic has been closed, and you submit a card, your comment will be deleted.
- To submit a card for critique, post a link to the card at GCU in the comments section of this clinic post. Allowances will be made if you’ve had a card declined, or made a new design you’d like advice on. Give us the link where we can see the card, such as your private gallery, Flickr, Tinypic, etc.
- Any artist is free to comment and/or give a critique of a submitted card. HOWEVER, post-and-run comments like “great card” or “you suck” will not be tolerated, nor will abuse. Criticism should be constructive, not destructive. Play nice or you will be banned.
- I also won’t tolerate temper tantrums if you decide your “artistic integrity” is being stepped on because you asked for a critique, and someone told you the photo you’re using isn’t in focus. If you can’t take honest criticism, don’t submit. Once gets you a warning; twice and you’re banned from submitting in the future.
- Artists who critique may do so by giving their opinion, posting an example of another card, or pointing the submitter to a video, on-line article, or other helpful suggestion.
- Don’t forget that artists who are giving you tips and helpful advice are volunteering their time and trouble. Be nice. A link back to their store on your website or blog is appreciated (but not mandatory).
- You are free not to take any advice offered. There’s no guarantee any card will be a bestseller, so don’t come into the clinic with unrealistic expectations.
- Rules may change as we go along and we see how things turn out, okay?
So without any further ado, I declare this week’s Critique Clinic open!
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GCU News: Black Friday Sale!
Hope everyone finds some great bargains on Black Friday!
FYI: In case you haven’t noticed, GCU is having a Black Friday sale – all cards $1.49
Use code 2012BLACKFRIDAY at checkout
Spread the word!
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Thanksgiving Wishes
Happy Thanksgiving to all our U.S. artists!
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Rainbow Connection: The Kraft
Paper that looks like cardboard or grocery store bags – kraft paper – is becoming a hot trend in the world of greeting cards. As a background color, the kraft paper palette offers support for many other colors and works for many different occasions. Be sure to include something like “kraft paper look” in the product description in your Artist’s Notes. You may also want to include “kraft paper is a generic industry term, not a brand name” in your Notes to Reviewers. Have fun!
As always, these are RGB colors. I’ve given you the hex numbers to make it easy to use these colors in your favorite graphics editing program, or you can simply save the palettes to your own hard drive.
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Design Spotlight: Vernita Bridges Hoyt
Today’s Design Spotlight shines on Vernita Bridges Hoyt, an artist with cute, original paintings of dogs and other animals! This particular card won the Design of the Day award on GCU.
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I’m a 5th generation native Texan who paints and photographs Texas’ animals, flowers, people, and places. My cards are original designs based on my original paintings or photos.
My best seller has been Chef Dachsie, a Thanksgiving card which features my original oil painting of the same name. The original painting was sold to help homeless dogs. Although I have painted for 55 years, I only committed to a professional painting routine in 2001 when I was juried into the original Daily Painters gallery site.
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Dash of Inspiration: Note to Reviewer
A Dash of Inspiration, A Cup of Creativity by Doreen
Note to Reviewer
I never make a card without communicating to the review team through the Note to Reviewer field … and neither should you. We all wish review times would be quicker, well here is one way that if all artists used it, the reviewers would have less work to do per card. Let’s face it, the better we are at our job – that of creating and readying our card for submission – then it goes without saying the reviewers will spend less time per card, benefiting all of us with quicker turn-around times. This field is one-time only, it’s not editable after you submit (no they aren’t going to make it editable) and it’s a private communication between you and the reviewers.
Here is what you should be using the Note to Reviewer field for:
1) If the photograph or artwork is yours … in other words, you have not used elements from any other creator, then at the very least you should state something like this:
“Artwork/Photograph is my own and I hold the copyright”
2) If you have created a card with some of your own creations and added some elements from other creators, then your Notes to Reviewer should look something like this:
“The photograph is my own. Additional elements are from: GoodiesRUs.get here: (insert a link to the actual item you used), and their TOU are here: (insert a link to their TOU).”
OR
“The artwork is my own. Added elements were purchased from … where I hold a Commercial Use License and/or Membership.”
3) If you have used the same basic imagery from a previously approved card, this too should be mentioned. (HOWEVER; you need to understand that any cards created before the Submission Guidelines went in to play are still subject to the guidelines … so just because a card with this image was approved in 2011 does not mean that this approval will get this new card through.)
“This is a previously approved design here: (insert previously approved PID) – I’ve decided to use it for additional categories.”
4) When creating a card for the Wanted Thread and therefore using Fast Track Option, always use the Note to Reviewers Field. Don’t make the reviewers guess WHY you’ve used Fast Track!
“This card was requested on the Wanted Thread here: (insert a link to the forum thread asking for the card you’ve created).”
5) A customer has contacted you and requested a custom card design, therefore you’ve used the Fast Track option.
“This is for Custom Request (paste the Request ID number from Manage Custom Requests).”
OR
“I’ve been contacted outside of GCU to create this card for a customer.”
They say it takes 21 consecutive days to establish a ‘habit’ and have it become routine; so I want to inspire you to start a habit of communicating to the Review Team. Be polite, professional and remember the more information you give them, the easier their job is and the less time they have to spend per card! HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
Lovely card by Sue Nollmeyer
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Critique Clinic – November 17-18, 2012
How does it work? For three days a week (Friday-Sunday midnight), I will open the clinic to any artist who wants an honest peer review and critique of a card which gets plenty of clicks but no sales, so something’s probably not quite right, or you’ve got a new design you want to test drive, or you’re unsure about the marketability of a card. Or perhaps you’re a newbie who isn’t sure if a recently submitted card is up to a marketable standard. Anyone is welcome to participate. In fact, I encourage everyone to at least look at the cards in question and read the critique comments – you may learn something. The purpose of the clinic is to help artists improve the commercial appeal and marketability of their cards.
THE RULES
- ONE card per artist only.
- Card must be for sale at Greeting Card Universe.
- We will take an unlimited number of artists, including those who have submitted recently, HOWEVER I reserve the right to close a clinic for the day if the submissions become overwhelming. If the clinic has been closed, and you submit a card, your comment will be deleted.
- To submit a card for critique, post a link to the card at GCU in the comments section of this clinic post. Allowances will be made if you’ve had a card declined, or made a new design you’d like advice on. Give us the link where we can see the card, such as your private gallery, Flickr, Tinypic, etc.
- Any artist is free to comment and/or give a critique of a submitted card. HOWEVER, post-and-run comments like “great card” or “you suck” will not be tolerated, nor will abuse. Criticism should be constructive, not destructive. Play nice or you will be banned.
- I also won’t tolerate temper tantrums if you decide your “artistic integrity” is being stepped on because you asked for a critique, and someone told you the photo you’re using isn’t in focus. If you can’t take honest criticism, don’t submit. Once gets you a warning; twice and you’re banned from submitting in the future.
- Artists who critique may do so by giving their opinion, posting an example of another card, or pointing the submitter to a video, on-line article, or other helpful suggestion.
- Don’t forget that artists who are giving you tips and helpful advice are volunteering their time and trouble. Be nice. A link back to their store on your website or blog is appreciated (but not mandatory).
- You are free not to take any advice offered. There’s no guarantee any card will be a bestseller, so don’t come into the clinic with unrealistic expectations.
- Rules may change as we go along and we see how things turn out, okay?
So without any further ado, I declare this week’s Critique Clinic open!
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Nuts and Bolts: The Devil’s in the Details
Recently, I’ve seen some questions asked about how closely customers actually look at cards, and if it’s really necessary for the reviewers to be so nit-picky about every little detail. The short answer is, details matter. Boy, do they matter!
If you want to avoid having cards Returned for Edits or just plain Declined, pay attention to what you’re submitting. Check over your photographs for distracting elements and other potential troublemakers. Use the guidelines in the Wiki. Sounds easy, but we all slip from time to time. It happens.
One tiny thing can mess up a card and make it unsellable. Don’t believe me? Take a look at this example. Here’s the original card by Maria Dryfhout:
Notice anything? Look more closely. See that shadow under the moth on the flower? It looks like a fly! Even the reviewer didn’t catch the fly at first, but in the end, the interloper was noticed.
Maria whisked the intruding fly away, so now her lovely sympathy card looks like this:
And this is what it means when we say the details matter. Professional photographers take hundreds of photographs, and may only choose one or two because in the rest, the details haven’t come together, something’s missing, or in this case, something is there that shouldn’t be. Use a discerning eye. You’ll end up with good looking cards that attract customers like … well, like a fly to honey!
Thanks, Maria.
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Design Spotlight: Rachel McNaughton
Today’s Design Spotlight shines on Rachel McNaughton, an artist offering beautiful watercolor designs!
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Flowers are my favorite subject to paint which is probably fairly obvious to anyone who visits my store.
All the cards are from my own watercolor paintings with a few ( mostly the wedding ones) painted specially for GCU. The bridesmaid and flower girl cards do well.
I live in the UK and have never seen cards such as invitations “to be” or “thank you” to bridesmaids in the shops over here. I think they are a lovely idea and will be a souvenir for years to come.
I have been painting in watercolor for over 25 years and now sell my work at exhibitions and for greetings cards worldwide. My website now has a gallery of prints and originals for sale online. I also have a range of prints and table mats printed from my art.
I recently joined an artists’ agency in the UK and this has meant wider uptake of designs for cards. I also teach painting to adults, hiring village halls to do so, and run workshops for local art clubs so that keeps me pretty busy!
I have 2 DVDs on watercolor painting ( “From Flower to Watercolour” & “Putting Colour into Watercolour”) which are sold by the Soc for All Artists and have written a book on flower painting which has 7 step by step flower painting projects to follow . These are projects which have been tried and tested in the classes I run and are carefully explained so you can’t go wrong!
I feel very privileged to be able to do something that I enjoy so much and people pay me for! How lucky is that?!
I have enjoyed being on GCU and it is always exciting to get the e mail telling me I have made a sale. The Thanksgiving cards went particularly well this year and I had 2 or 3 large orders for them. I have just started on some more Christmas designs, but although they are uploaded, they are waiting for the finishing touches and then will be submitted.
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Rainbow Connection: Modern Baby Colors
Pregnancy Announcements, Birth Announcements, Adoption Announcements … so many opportunities for artists to polish up their design skills and make a real impact! These palettes for baby boy and baby girl are what I’d term “country” colors – imagine a nice plaid pattern or a colorful background with child appropriate elements. Of course, you can use these palettes for other designs. Have fun!
As always, these are RGB colors. I’ve given you the hex numbers to make it easy to use these colors in your favorite graphics editing program, or you can simply save the palettes to your own hard drive.
GCU Community 