Freebie Wednesday: Monthego Sans Serif Font.
This handmade stylish font is perfect for product designs such as templates, mockups, magazines, and even for your own logo designs! This creative new font comes in OTF and TTF formats, so don’t miss out!
This classy freebie is brought to you by Gens Creativ Store! Only available in the Hungry Jpec store for a week!
This product comes with a commercial license.
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Nuts and Bolts: Graduation 2020 to 2021
Nuts & Bolts – Graduation 2020 to 2021
Graduation card sales will begin before we know it. Let’s be ready for all those proud grads with updated cards! Many college graduations are in May and high schools right after that in late May and June. Chances are these will be virtual ceremonies as we saw in 2020. There are hundreds of graduation cards on the site dated 2020. This includes Congratulations, Announcements, and Invitations. Not only should card images be updated but also card titles, keywords, and artist’s notes accordingly. This even applies to custom front design to make them more marketable and avoid shopper errors.
Search results for “Graduation 2020“
Tip: A quick way to pinpoint the bulk of your related cards is within your Manage Store >> Manage Cards and locate cards searching with keywords “graduation 2020”.
While graduation is on your mind, consider adding new designs to the collection to offer fresh choices to shoppers. See here about adding fresh designs to a saturated category.Please take the time now to update your designs before 3/1/21. After 3/1/21, GCU will take any outdated cards offline.
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Wanted New Cards: National Women Physicians Day.
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Freebie Wednesday: FREE Hand Drawn Doodle Sweets.
Presenting FREE Hand Drawn Doodle Sweets!
This collection of 27 different sweets can be used as logos, icons, packaging design or help you to create awesome cute designs! You will also receive 9 sugary seamless patterns to go along with your confectionary delights!
This cute freebie is brought to you by Red Ink! Only available on the Hungry Jpeg site for a week so doin’t miss it!
This product comes with a commercial license.
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Nuts and Bolts: 2020 & New Year Earnings Info
Nuts & Bolts – 2020 & New Year Earnings Info
A few reminders as we close the books on 2020 and process 4Q payments.
Please see the 4Q Pay Day forum post here:http://www.greetingcarduniverse.com/forum/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1610666088/0#0
A few important notes to make:Earnings adjustments for both 3Q & 4Q free card promotions will be reflected in your 4Q payment:https://gcucommunity.com/2020/11/06/nuts-and-bolts-3q-and-4q-free-card-adjustment/
A new year brings new quarterly thresholds:https://gcucommunity.com/2020/10/16/nuts-and-bolts-new-earnings-thresholds-effective-1-1-21/
And lastly the update here re: 2020 1099 forms:https://gcucommunity.com/2020/12/26/nuts-and-bolts-2020-1099-nec-form-misc/
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Wanted New Cards: Birthday for Son’s Partner
To expedite the review of these cards, please check Fast Track Review on the card image details page when you create your card and add a Note for Reviewers like “for BLOG– Wanted Cards”.
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Freebie Wednesday: Free Drop Swing Font.
Drop Swing is a charming and romantic handmade font, perfect for holiday greeting cards, invitations, postcards and more! This elegant lettering font is made in Pointillism style, like a light breeze that gives freshness and dreaminess to your handmade creations.
This lovely freebie is brought to you by Happy Letters! Only available for a week on the Hungry Jpeg site. Don’t miss out!
This product comes with a commercial license.
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Rainbow Connection: Color Palettes From Nature.
Beautiful color palettes from nature done by Megan Renee.
She also has an instragram page to showcase her beautiful nature photography.
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Dash of Inspiration: January 2021 Design Challenge
My apologies for this post being so late! The year kicked off with a bang on my end, so I fell a bit behind! Let’s begin this new year with a challenge featuring the 2021 Pantone Color of the Year. This year it’s a warm and optimistic color combination to give us resilience and hope.
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Theme: Pantone Color of the Year 2021 – Illuminating and Ultimate Gray
Requirements:
- Create a new design using the two Pantone color combination: Illuminating: F6E15D and Ultimate Gray 989A9C
- Any category which your card speaks to.
- No Stock card creations will be accepted.
- Blank verse will not be considered for entry in this challenge.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Please do NOT use trademarked terms “Pantone”, “Illuminating Yellow”, “Ultimate Gray” in your meta-data. You can however use individual terms like: illuminating, yellow, ultimate, gray, color of the year, etc.
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Entry Deadline: Sunday, January 31st
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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.
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Category:
Any
Note: if your submissions is clearly COVID specific, please use these categories:
Holidays >> ….. >> Coronavius / COVID 19
Collections >> Health Awareness >> Coronavius / COVID 19
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Rules:
- Submission must meet GCU’s Submission Guidelines and be Approved through the usual Review Cycle– Fast Track your submission with this in the Notes to Reviewer: January 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.
- Stock Card Creations entries will not be accepted.
- Your designs should differ from those already offered in the category of your choice to offer shoppers a variety of choices, not more of the same.
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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.
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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 58,000 followers, now THAT’S exposure!
- The winning card will be Design of the Day following the announcement of the winners (within 48-hours).
EXCEPTION: Horizontal (landscape) cards may not be featured as DOD due to GCU Home Page space restrictions. In these cases, GCU will choose a different vertically oriented card from your store to feature as DOD. Thank you for your understanding and apologies for this limitation.
- The winning card will be added to the Greeting Card Universe Design Challenge Winners Pinterest Board – currently GCU’s Pinterest Page followers: 5.36K!
- The winning card, should the artist choose, may be referenced in a new series by the winning artist and he/she may Fast Track all cards in the new series (being sure to give the Challenge URL and winning card PID in your Notes to Reviewer for each card in this series).
- 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.
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Winning card will be posted on GCU’s Instagram with 2,000 followers and counting!
- 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.
- 10 free greeting card credits added to your GCU account. Apply them at checkout and they never expire.
- A Design Challenge GCU digital award for 2021!
2nd Place:
- Your submission will be Design of the Day the following week of announcing the Challenge winners (within 7-days).
EXCEPTION: Horizontal (landscape) cards may not be featured as DOD due to GCU Home Page space restrictions. In these cases, GCU will choose a different vertically oriented card from your store to feature as DOD. Thank you for your understanding and apologies for this limitation.
- 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!
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Winning card will be posted on GCU’s Instagram with 2,000 followers and counting!
- 5 free greeting card credits added to your GCU account. Apply them at checkout and they never expire.
- A Design Challenge GCU digital award for 2021!
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Tips:
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Be inspired to create and learn something new!
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Nuts and Bolts: Dedicate Yourself to the Details – Legibility
Nuts & Bolts – Dedicate Yourself to the Details – Legibility
It is often the little details that escape the artist’s eye. It is always a good idea to step away from a design that you have been meticulously working on or ask a brutally honest companion to give it a once over. The review team is certainly a fresh set of eyes and often catches tiny fixes or areas of improvement. GCU is grateful for artists who are open to collaborating with the reviewers on minor adjustments that make a big difference.
See this example with an improvement in text placement and font choice both leading to better legibility in the final design.
Original Image:
From the reviewer:
The text size is a little too small to be clearly legible after printing. Please increase the size/adjust for more legibility.
The blank space at the bottom of the card may also look like a print error and looks a little unfinished.
We are happy to take another look at this card if you would like to make some edits and resubmit.
Thank you.
TYPOGRAPHY – Legibility
See the GCU Blog for explanation & examples:
https://gcucommunity.com/2013/06/03/dash-of-inspiration-typography-legibility/
Resulting Image:
Thank you to GCU artist, Alda Monteschio of Heart Tugs, for her quick edits and receptive teamwork with our review team to create a well read submission that reads well.
Here are a few other examples of before and after improvement for cover text legibility by Angela Castillo of FairyGirlCards as well as Linda Gladman Art.
Read more…
GCU Community 