Valentine Cards
Add romance, passion and mystery to your Valentine by sending an e-card in another language. Try these phrases in French, Spanish, German, Italian, Welsh, Gaelic, and Irish.
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Labels: Valentine Cards
THE ART OF GREETING CARDS
Labels: Valentine Cards
Labels: Valentine Cards
After receiving the New Year card, Imam Ma Hsiao-chi pointed out to the Foreign Ministry that the card was offensive to Muslims, the Liberty Times reported. Muslims do not eat pork and regard pigs as unclean animals.
But the ministry defended Foreign Minister Huang Chih-fang's sending out the greeting cards, which were printed because 2007 is the Year of Pig according to the Chinese lunar calendar.
"Sending New Year cards is part of our culture and has nothing to do with religion. Minister Huang sent the cards to people in Taiwan, not to Muslim countries, but we still want to thank Imam Ma for reminding us," the Liberty Times quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Chien-yeh as saying.The Year of Pig begins on February 18 with the start of the Chinese New Year celebrations, the most important holiday for Chinese all over the world.
Last month, Taiwan's postal monopoly the Chunghwa Post Company Ltd. issued the Year of Pig stamp, but warned Taiwanese not to use the stamps when sending letters and parcels to Muslim countries or Muslim friends.
China has also banned images and mention of pigs in television advertisements aired over the lunar new year to avoid offending the country's Muslims.
China's ban also applies to cartoons and traditional paper-cut images of pigs, and to slogans such as "Golden Pig Brings You Fortune!" and "Wish You a Happy Pig Year!"
The Chinese lunar calendar follows the Chinese zodiac, or horoscope, which has a 12-year cycle. Each year is represented by an animal -- rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and pig.
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Labels: Muslim Greeting Cards
"The White House will send greeting cards signed by President Bush to commemorate special events, accomplishments or milestones free of charge to U.S. citizens. To request a greeting card from President Bush, just follow these guidelines from the White House Greetings Office:
ALL GREETING REQUESTS MUST BE SUBMITTED IN WRITING* TO:
The White House
Attn: Greetings Office
Washington, D.C. 20502-0039
(Requests made via email will not be processed.)*
Please review these guidelines carefully before mailing your request to the White House.
U.S. CITIZENS ONLY -- The White House will send greetings to United States citizens only, for special occasions as outlined below...".
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Masahiro Chatani.The new business will still be run by the current chief executive of Greeting Card Group, Milton Guffogg, while Mr Fort becomes the new chairman. The sale saves 1,500 jobs and just under 300 stores across the UK as well as the firm's head office in Peterborough.
When the company collapsed into administration two weeks ago, it had 470 branches employing more than 2,500 people. Two-thirds of the stores have been profitable.
The group is the second-largest card and gift retailer in the UK after Clinton Cards, and trades under the Cardfair and Card Warehouse brands.The greeting card market is worth around £2bn and Greeting Card Group's core stores have been and are expected to continue to be successful, the administrators said.
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Currently in her second year of her Masters program in Applied Social Psychology, Shannon Ellis says birthday cards have a habit of betraying society’s attitudes towards growing old. Studying the content of 150 age-related birthday cards, Ellis discovered that 66.7 per cent of the cards “represented aging in a negative manner.” Co-written by the National University of Ireland’s Todd Morrison, the study appeared in last year’s issue of The International Journal of Aging and Human Development.
“The take-home message of our research wasn’t in any way to degrade or try and berate card manufacturers, or tell people not to buy birthday cards. The idea was to consider whether or not the recipient is going to view that card in the same light that you are,” she says.
Comparing her results to studies done in the U.S. in the early 1980s, Ellis was surprised that not much has changed in the world of age related birthday cards in the last 25 years. The amount of negative stereotyping hovered around the same number; and so did the areas the cards focused on – physical decline, forgetfulness, etc. Ellis’ surprise stems mainly from the fact the purportedly powerful baby boom generation is getting ready to retire. While she believes ‘boomers’ are still influential drivers of the economy, she says birthday cards may have stayed the same because younger people are traditionally the people buying them.
“Most of the time, these cards are being purchased by somebody who’s younger and given to somebody who’s older. So that person is seeing that card as being funny, but they may not be considering that the person they’re giving it to is someone who is very conscious of their aging and has issues with it.”
The study also found that cards dealing with older seniors (70-100 years) were predominantly written in the past tense, subtly projecting the notion that older seniors’ lives are basically over by this point.
“An example was, ‘Lives you’ve touched, friendships you’ve made, wisdom gained, happiness known are all reasons to celebrate.’ And they were often written in that sort of way, saying you need to live in your memories, because you have nothing left to contribute. This was rather an interesting finding that wasn’t found in any of the other research,” she says.
While Ellis admits her study, conducted in Red Deer, Alberta, was fairly small-scale, she believes a larger study in a major centre encompassing the new phenomenon of internet cards and focus groups with seniors could yield some interesting results.
And as she winds up her Masters program, Ellis says she plans on continuing her academic study of seniors and how they’re treated in society.
“Seniors are often invisible in our society, which is very sad. I don’t think it’s going to stay that way once the baby boomers get older. They are going to become very prevalent in society. They are going to be out there advocating for their rights and the rights of seniors, and as they become more noticeable and out there in society, you’re going to start seeing some changes.”
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Greeting card writers help people express thoughts and sentiments. "Greeting cards have to feel very personal, as if the words apply to you specifically," says Nicole. "But they also have to feel very personal to thousands of other card shoppers." To accomplish this feat, writers look for emotions many people share, such as the feeling of freedom after graduating from school.
Card writers like Nicole usually write to fill a specific request. Their editors tell them the types of cards the company needs, such as cards for a birthday or a Mother’s Day line. Editors give writers information about the card’s sender and receiver, including details about their ages, genders, and relationship to each other.
To find common themes to write about, Nicole follows the latest cultural trends. She reads modern poetry, looks through magazines and comic strips, and skims popular novels, including Oprah’s Book Club selections—all of which are in her company’s library. Other card writers in her office read sociology and psychology books and watch television shows. "We have to know the language people are using today," she says.
Greeting card writers choose their prose to fit the sender, whose style of speech is often different from their own. "One of the hardest things for me to learn was how to write for male card senders," Nicole says. "There are some words that men typically don’t use in conversation, like ‘treasure,’ ‘joy,’ or ‘precious.’" For teenagers, Nicole might use slang; for younger people, she uses short, simple words. All writers learn the speaking styles of different types of people in different situations.o Get hip to the modern household and its diversity of relationships. California psychologist Carole Lieberman would like to see more cards for divorced couples on good terms, and cards addressing step- and half-children, parents, grandparents, and other kin affected by a break-up.
o Get specific. Today's greeting cards virtually ignore AIDS, cancer, heart disease, and mental illness. Greeting cards might be a tasteful, non-offensive way of connecting to and acknowledging people isolated by disease in a hospital or at home.
o Trash the sugar-coated prose. Most cards err on the side of pretense, either too stiff or too flowery. Recipients don't know what to make of modern card-style poetry: "Is it friendly love, marry me love, or just a cute joke?" asks Lieberman.
Labels: Greeting Card Psychology
RD: I keep paper with me all the time. Sometimes I'll get the first six lines and I need two lines to end the piece and I struggle with it all day and it will hit me while I'm walking. Hallmark brings in a lot of educators for us to listen to, people who are experts in sociology and the way people relate. We also have visiting lecturers from different art schools or different writers. We've had a lot of big writers come and give workshops and that kind of helps you get unstuck.
We've also got a huge creative library with periodicals for designers, and writers and editors. It's not really hard to come up with ideas because I love the study of relationships. If I have to write for a situation that I haven't personally experienced, I think of a friend or a relative who has. Or I'll watch a movie or read a book. The study of human nature is so fascinating; it's not hard for me to imagine what somebody's feeling or thinking. Getting it down in the right words is tricky.
What makes a good greeting card?RD: A card that someone picks up and says "God, they were thinking exactly of me when they wrote this." The beauty of that circumstance is that we were thinking of you and that it works for you, but it works for about 100,000 other people too. It's just the whole science of emotions. We're all a lot more alike than we know we are. People also appreciate honesty in greeting cards. If something sounds like it's really sincere and there's an important message behind it — it's not just something strung together — that makes all the difference in the world.
What makes a good greeting card writer?JH: The best writers here tend to be people who are well read, and who have a lot of different frames of reference. The other thing that really supports greeting card writing is having a life of your own. I think it's sort of the negative capability that Keats talks about when he wrote about Shakespeare being able to step into somebody else's mind. And in a way it's like an actor's skill, because you have to be able to project yourself into somebody else's situation or make a connection between your own and theirs. I've always assumed that I'm not so different from everybody else.
RD: A good greeting card writer has to be able to open her heart for other people to see and not be embarrassed about being called foolish or too personal or too sentimental. The difference between a greeting card writer and other types of writers is that we're all about emotion. Hallmark is often held up as a common object of ridicule. People will say "that sounds like a schmaltzy Hallmark card" but not all our cards are that way. You always run the risk when you're writing from the heart for somebody to say "that's a little bit more than I wanted to know."
SE: Anyone who can think of fresh, funny, or clever ideas, and who can have a good sense of what is likely to sell. That and a willingness to sit and work on it for a long time. It's a business where you can't afford to claim writer's block because you've got to keep producing. The biggest challenge is that your subject matter is so limited. You're dealing with the same topics again and again. You're always going to have another requisition for birthday and for Christmas and Valentine's Day. That, especially, is one of our challenges in traditional humour. In alternative humour, I think they can range a little bit more and have looser tie-ins between the occasion and whatever joke they're making. We are generally expected to provide a pretty direct message about the occasion. What do you say for the hundredth time you've been working on birthdays? What could possibly be new?
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Raw materials
Greeting cards are made of card stock that may be of wood pulp or part "rag" (textile waste)—sturdy, fairly expensive paper. Increasingly, these card stocks are being made with recycled materials. Many, but not all, of the companies put a glossy aqueous coating consisting of water and a water-based acrylic coating on the stock after printing particularly when a photograph is featured. Inks vary as well. Many companies are moving toward the use of soy inks, containing water-based solvents and are more easily cleaned, recycled, or disposed of than oil-based solvent inks. Soy ink composition varies with the printing process; cards are most often printed using sheet-fed printing and the soy ink for that includes between 20%-30% soybean oil, resins, pigments, and waxes.
The Manufacturing Process
The manufacture of greeting cards varies greatly depending on the size of the corporation. Successful greeting card companies put a great deal of importance on business research, marketing, and creative design because these help determine what cards will sell well.
Research and marketing
Designing the card
However, it is hard to get a piece of writing published. It is only when you decide to have a go yourself that you come to appreciate that, somewhere along the line, talent and skill actually come into it.
So what is the best way to go about it? Where do you start?
There are generally three styles of writing in greeting cards:
What are you best at? Usually the best way to start is by acknowledging your strengths. Even if you can turn your hand to any style there will usually be one at which you excel.
The best place is your local high street card shop. Go in take a look, see who the publishers are in the market you are aiming for and take a note of the publisher. This is important, you can imagine how unprofessional is would look to send a punchline to someone whose cards are blank! Most publishers do print their names and addresses on the reverse of the card. It is worth jotting down as much as you can.
From BBC Antiques.
Greetings cards have exchanged hands since the 18th century and are now a popular collecting area. Clive Farahar from the Antiques Roadshow, has advice on starting a collection; where to buy, what to avoid and affordable cards to collect.
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Labels: Greeting Cards
Labels: Greeting Cards

Labels: Cool Cards

Labels: Greeting Cards
From The Georgian Times Labels: Greeting Cards

Labels: Cool Cards