GCU Community

Busy, busy, busy in the last seven days! I’m still seeing artists who are unsure about the new marketability standards, and what that might mean for them. To help those who aren’t sure if their design skills are up to par, I’ll be posting a series of articles titled Design 101 where I’ll be guiding you through the basic rules of design (yes, there are rules; yes, rules can be broken, but you must first understand them and how they work). Look for the first to appear next week.

Hidden Gems: Birthday for Birth Mom - artist Sandra Rose Designs

Last week, our Critique Clinic drew quite a number of submissions from artists seeking advice on improving their cards – if you haven’t read the responses, what are you waiting for? Our Design Spotlight was on Janet Lee Palaggi of Janet Lee Designs; the Rainbow Connection gave us a beautiful and trendy Nautical color palette; and Doreen Erhardt’s Dash of Inspiration – Cup of Creativity celebrated artists around the world.

Until next time, don’t forget to pass the love around!

_________________________

Put Your “Pro” Face On: Back of Card Credits

It’s time to talk about the Back of Card Credits (BOC). That’s the information printed on the back of every one of your Greeting Card Universe cards – your logo + your store’s URL.

I don’t know about you, but when I pull a greeting card out of the rack at a grocery store, I look at the card’s front, inside, and the back as well.  So do shoppers. The BOC is the second face of your store, something that represents you as an artist, a greeting card designer and a business person whenever a shopper buys your card and sends it to someone.

Just as you want your storefront to be professional looking, you want your BOC to be as professional as possible. It’s your brand, it helps sell you to customers, and it says a lot about you as a business. A logo can make or break a business, which is why companies pay thousands of dollars to design firms to come up with consumer-attracting logos.

You only have one chance to make a good first impression. When the recipient of a card flips it over to look at the back and find out where it came from, no matter how nice your front of card design is, a BOC that looks amateurish, ugly, sloppy, or just plain bad will not draw shoppers to visit your store.

And in case you weren’t aware, in the beginning GCU actually had cards returned by shoppers because the BOCs weren’t well done – hence the option for shoppers to choose a “simplified” BOC instead – meaning store URL, no logo.

Hidden Gems - 35th Birthday - Ya-Graphic

So what goes into making a good logo? Think about the company logos you see every day, the logos of companies you trust to give you a great product experience in exchange for your money.

The basic rules of logo design are:

Follow the Fundamentals – The logo must follow the basic principles of design – form, clarity, consistency, space and color. This means your logo must have aesthetic appeal, the same as the greeting cards you design, and be designed to attract shoppers of all types. No personal photos. The logo should not appear distorted or squished. Every element of your logo, including any fonts you use, must be visible and above all, recognizable or readable at a small size. For GCU, a 200×200 pixel square is the ideal size for BOC.

Form Follows Function – Keep it simple. You logo must be instantly recognizable and usable in any context, at any size, on any background (from plain to patterned, any color) – whether on the back of a greeting card, in a store banner, on a T-shirt, on a matchbook cover or a bumper sticker. The fussier and more intricate your design, the further you’re getting away from a functional logo. Do not under any circumstances use shadow, 3D effects, texture effects, embossing, beveling, glare, a photograph or gradients. Simple is best.

For Consistency: Use your logo on every product you produce, on every on-line store you maintain, on your business cards, brochures, and everywhere else. Branding is important to create consumer awareness. The more shoppers see you out there, the more they’ll want to find out more about you.

Find Your Face – Choose an image for your logo that represents something about you as an artist, or some aspect of your business. For example, my CorrieWeb logo is an illustration – the Earth encircled by different animals because a lot of my art has animals in it, and our tag line is “The Wonderful World of Corrie Kuipers.” Your logo should be unique, and have a classic, timeless quality that will not become dated in two years. And don’t be a copycat. It’s a fact that copycat logos will fail. Don’t believe me? Just ask Pepsi. Their old logo was very similar to the one used by Coca-Cola. It wasn’t until Pepsi completely redesigned their logo to be unique that they saw a big increase in sales.

Hidden Gems: Mother Birthday - artist Maria Dryfhout

For the Forum – You may not be aware, but the picture you upload to your ARTIST PROFILE which appears in your Forum posts is the same picture used for BOC unless you choose otherwise. If you want to show your “little old me” face to the Forum, and a professional logo for BOC, you need to: go to MANAGE STORE > ARTIST PROFILE. You’ll see two boxes – Artist Profile Picture and BOC Picture. Upload the appropriate graphic to each. Be sure to SAVE your changes.

Bottom line? If you’re designing and selling greeting cards, you are a professional. If your logo doesn’t reflect that, you may be losing sales – not just now, but in the future.

_________________________

The Critique Clinic is open every Friday, Saturday and Sunday to all GCU artists seeking peer review, advice and tips. Any artist may submit or leave a critique. All artists are encouraged to check the comment threads – you’ll learn something that may help you with your own marketability.

The title you choose from your greeting card is as important as your keywords. Search engines place great weight on a title, so you shouldn’t use a string of random words. Instead, titles should be unique and descriptive without becoming a shopping list, such as “To my Aunt – Chinese New Year Lanterns” not “Aunt, Lanterns, Chinese New Year, Red.” Also, when shoppers do an off-site search through Google or other search engines, they won’t see an image of the card in the search results, just the title. Would a string of random words entice YOU to click the link?

Tanya (Moonie) at Moonlake Designs has made a small collection of high quality photographs available to any artist who wants to use them. Other artists have joined in. See her Forum post for all the details.

Websprinter continues to maintain her very helpful list of Free Art Programs.

There is a GCU artists’ group on Facebook? We encourage you to join, post cards for your fellow artists to admire, share news, and have fun!

DID YOU KNOW you can “like” this newsletter or any post on the GCU Community blog, or include them in your social bookmarks? Or Google +1 them! Just click the title of the post, which takes you to the permanent link page. At the bottom of the page you’ll see buttons for social sites like Facebook, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc.

 _________________________

The next Newsletter will be published on August 5, 2011

A little panic going around as GCU announces it’s new Marketability Standards (unfortunately, Mindy’s forum thread was lost). Not to worry; check below for an article about marketability and what it means to you, both as an artist and as a business person. And we’ve gleaned Mindy’s original forum post from Google, so you can read it below!

Hidden Gems: Birthday Humor - Sharon Fernleaf

Last week ,our Artist Interview with Sandra of Sandra Rose Designs gave us insight into a successful artist, while Doreen Erhardt’s weekly column, A Dash of Inspiration – a Cup of Creativity was for the birds ;-). Our Community Challenge: Guest Bloggers ended with John H. Johnson winning the prize. Finally, the weekend Critique Clinic offered help and advice to GCU artists.

Until next time, don’t forget to pass the love around!

_________________________

What the Heck is Marketability Anyway?

What makes a shopper in a store reach for a certain card in a rack? What makes a shopper open their wallet and put down their hard-earned cash for a piece of colorfully printed card stock? There are as many answers to these questions as there are stars in the sky, but it all boils down to one word: appeal.

Commercial appeal, that is.

What’s that mean? Simply put, greeting cards that are well designed, attractive, and suit the purpose for which they’ve been created have commercial appeal. While the appreciation of art is subjective, therefore not every design will appeal the same way to every shopper, a marketable card ticks the boxes for many consumers and entices them to buy.

GCU’s new Marketability Standards have been created to raise the bar for artists, enabling GCU to compete on an equal footing with the “Big Boys” in the greeting card market. The review team will not only be looking at new cards, they will be taking a look at older cards, too. And some stores may end up deleted.

This does NOT mean that if a card has never been sold, it will be deleted.

This does NOT mean your store is in danger of being snatched away without warning.

This does NOT mean you should stop designing cards because you’ve never had professional training.

Here is the text of Mindy’s original Forum post (found through Google’s cache):

On the heels of our recent landmark of reaching 500,000 cards it is due time for GCU to turn an honest and critical eye to our existing collection and new cards.  To date GCU has accepted virtually all submitted work and artists.  Today we are introducing a MarketabilityStandards policy.  Based on GCU’s evaluation of marketability and commercial appeal, GCU will begin saying “no thank you” to cards and ultimately some artists. 

The Marketability Standards and Guidelines raises the bar on card designs to increase professionalism and marketability and ultimately a better experience for our shoppers.  This will up the overall product quality on GCU which reflects on all artists in our community as shoppers view GCU as a single store.  Our goal is to provide a selection of greeting cards to the buying public that are competitive,  professional, and equal to the highest level of design. 

Although we’d like to say this process will be clear cut, objective and quantitative, in practice that is virturally impossible.  By nature it is subjective and heavily qualitative.  However here are some of the elements that we have established as standards and guidelines that our reviewers will be looking at.  These will soon be reflected on our GCU Wiki page with image examples: 

1. Subject Matter –  poor, random, unrelated, not professional 
2. Image Quality – clarity, color, lighting, angle, cropping, shadows, composition,  misuse of filter, out of focus, exposure, particularly with photographs 
3. Overused Image 
4. Unrelated Image – not related nor appropriate to occasion/category, gender, relation, age, etc. 
5. Any Reason – on a case by case basis we reserve the right to not accept a card considered to be lacking in commercial appeal 

The review team will begin to apply these standards to newly submitted cards.  No cards will be grandfathered in so GCU will also begin weeding through existing cards and saying “no thank you” to those deemed to be lacking in commercial appeal.  Ultimately the direction is for new artists to submit sample work for evaluation before opening a GCU storefront. 

This is an excellent time for all artists to look at their body of work with a critical eye as well.  Schedule your own “Weed out Week” where artists look at their own cards and remove those designs that you feel do not reflect your best work or do not shine with professionalism and polish.  Consider using your family and friends and peer artists as honest and frank critics and participating in the GCU Community BLOG Critique Clinic.

We realize many artists will not be happy with this new policy.   This is another corner for GCU and artists to turn and we will all feel the growing pains.  However we are confident that this is a fair and necessary step as GCU grows and strives to be the leader in online paper greeting card sales.

Thank you in advance for your understanding and support!  Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.

And to clarify what is meant by overused image, here’s another quote from the same lost thread, also by Mindy:

At this point overused will go hand in hand with images or subject matter that is unrelated or inappropriate to the card/occasion.  For example: a lovely pine cone may be fine for winter birthday, christmas and father’s day but not so much for baby naming ceremony or congratulations on moving for example UNLESS of course the artist has done something in design or verse that makes the connection.

What can you do to give your designs more marketability? Here are some tips to help you create greeting cards that have commercial appeal, and should comply with GCU’s new Marketability Standards:

Photographers Should – Only use photographs portraying subjects that are in focus, well exposed, well cropped, sharp, creative and dynamic. Be certain the photograph you choose suits the category you’re designing the card for (in other words, a depressed looking mongoose is unlikely to be make a successful birthday card UNLESS paired with a clever verse). If you put text on the front of the card, make sure the composition is correct. Go easy on filters and effects – while such designs may look “cool” on your computer monitor, they will print poorly.

Hidden Gems: Birthday Humor - artist Angela Castillo

Illustrators Should – Ensure your design’s composition is correct and pleasing to the eye. Choose your font for front of card text with care – it should match the tone of your design, and be readable even at a small size. When drawing people, keep in mind that many shoppers don’t generally like cards with “real” looking people on the front (unless it’s a cartoon panel with a point) – to give your people blue, purple, green or other outlandish colored skin to make them more cartoonish, or substitute animals. If a viewer can’t immediately distinguish the subject of your design (in other words, if they think you’ve drawn a fish when you’ve actually drawn a cat), then go back to the drawing board.

All Artists Should –  Consider the recipient when designing cards (feminine, masculine or general) – for example, a birthday card with a vase of flowers is unlikely to be sent to a male recipient, therefore you don’t need to include male relations if you’re doing relationship specific cards. Don’t mix religion with secular subjects (in other words, don’t create a design with Santa Claus holding baby Jesus unless you mean to be humorous – you won’t please either market), and be careful when designing with religious subjects as mistakes in this area may offend. Avoid overuse of effects including text effects and shadow, which may not print well, and don’t always look professional.

Our own community Critique Clinic is open Friday-Saturday-Sunday every week. It’s a place where artists can submit a card and receive an honest peer review and critique, along with suggestions and tips on how to improve. Even if you don’t want to submit a card, stop by and see what other artists have submitted. You’ll probably learn something new.

Don’t be afraid. These new standards have been put in place to help you, and don’t forget the community is here to help, too. Now’s the time to go over your old designs with a more critical eye. With all the tools at your disposal, you’ll be have a store filled with polished, professional looking designs that sell.

Hidden Gems: Birthday Humor - artist Corrie Kuipers

_________________________

Mindy’s forum announcement about the new Marketability Standards crashed and was lost yesterday, however you’ll find the original text quoted above thanks to my partner, Nene, and her Internet detective skills.

Tanya (Moonie) at Moonlake Designs has made a small collection of high quality photographs available to any artist who wants to use them. See her Forum post for all the details.

Websprinter continues to maintain her very helpful list of Free Art Programs.

There is a GCU artists’ group on Facebook? We encourage you to join, post cards for your fellow artists to admire, share news, and have fun!

DID YOU KNOW you can “like” this newsletter or any post on the GCU Community blog, or include them in your social bookmarks? Or Google +1 them! Just click the title of the post, which takes you to the permanent link page. At the bottom of the page you’ll see buttons for social sites like Facebook, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc.

 _________________________

The next Newsletter will be published on July 28, 2011