Greeting cards on display at retail. A greeting card is a piece of card stock, usually with an illustration or photo, made of high quality paper alternative valentine’s gifts an expression of friendship or other sentiment. Greeting cards are usually packaged with an envelope and come in a variety of styles.
There are both mass-produced and handmade versions available and they may be distributed by hundreds of companies large and small. While typically inexpensive, more elaborate cards with die-cuts, pop-ups, sound elements or glued-on decorations may be more expensive. Hallmark Cards and American Greetings, both U. In Western countries and increasingly in other societies, many people traditionally mail seasonally themed cards to their friends and relatives in December. Many service businesses also send cards to their customers in this season, usually with a universally acceptable non-religious message such as “happy holidays” or “season’s greetings.
Counter cards: Greeting cards that are sold individually. Inside is a pre-printed message appropriate for the occasion, along with a blank space for the sender to add a signature or handwritten message. A matching envelope is sold with the card. Also known as digital greeting cards, they can be found online through shopping platforms such as Etsy and some blogs.
Usually available in the form of a PDF document, the design for a card can be printed out at home or a local print shop. Printable cards have allowed designers to make cards readily available to customers all over the world. A get-well card is a greeting card which is sent to someone when they are ill. Their use in the case of chronic and terminal illness is problematic because the patient may not be expected to recover but they may still offer comfort to the invalid. The concept of a khaki fabric card appeared in 1899 during the first Christmas of the Boer War and was issued by a business in Glasgow.
In New Zealand, it was not uncommon to receive a khaki greeting card, even the premier, RJ Seddon is said to have received one. The custom of sending greeting cards can be traced back to the ancient Chinese who exchanged messages of good will to celebrate the New Year, and to the early Egyptians, who conveyed their greetings on papyrus scrolls. By the 1850s, the greeting card had been transformed from a relatively expensive, handmade and hand-delivered gift to a popular and affordable means of personal communication, due largely to advances in printing, mechanization, and a reduction in postal rates with the introduction of the postage stamp. Technical developments like color lithography in 1930 propelled the manufactured greeting card industry forward.
Humorous greeting cards, known as studio cards, became popular in the late 1940s and 1950s. In the 1970s, Recycled Paper Greetings, a small company needing to establish a competing identity against the large companies like Hallmark Cards, began publishing humorous, whimsical card designs with the artist’s name credited on the back. During the 1980s, reduced costs of small batch printing and die cutting together with a growing taste for handmade cards made it economically possible for smaller niche companies to set up in competition with the large established brands. In the United Kingdom, it is estimated that one billion pounds are spent on greeting cards every year, with the average person sending 55 cards per year.