Creative Consultant Geoff Sanderson, who has spent many years recruiting and developing greeting card designers in businesses such as Tigerprint/M&S, Hallmark and Moonpig, and now runs his own
talent spotting and mentoring agency, Jungle Studio, shares his insight into some of the graduate opportunities in the greeting card industry.
The UK greeting card industry is worth over £1.5bn* in annual retail sales, and that’s just single greeting cards! The British send more cards per capita than any other nation, and we lead the world in greeting card innovation and design.
It’s been one of the UK creative industries best kept secrets that it’s a fantastic starting point for thousands of graduate’s in illustration, graphic design, photography, surface pattern, textiles, and for creative and innovative people thinkers generally; who have entered via work placement, freelance, licensing, recruitment or setting up their own small business, online site or selling designs at a print fair.
Geoff Sanderson, Celebration Nation
It’s also true that with a myriad of entry points, companies, categories of every size creating endless possibilities, it can be hard to navigate your way in, find out information and who can help, is hiring or can support; the Greeting Card Association is here to help!
Geoff Sanderson outside New Designers, GCA information handed out at 2024 Young Designers.
The Greeting Card Association (GCA) is the not-for-profit trade body for the greeting card industry, who have been working to support, protect and promote the industry for over 100 years (since 1919). Today the GCA comprises over 500 members companies, large and small. As the voice of the UK card industry, our mission is to support the growth and promotion of our wonderfully innovative and diverse sector. The GCA supports its members to build their businesses, providing specialist information and connecting them with others in the industry through their website and networking events.
With our recently launched New Creative Talent scheme the GCA aims to help highlight interested graduates to its members and assist their journey into the greeting card industry.
We have two ways to help recent and post graduates:
- As a course or Uni.
- We are offering Universities the chance to join the GCA and highlight their students work on our new portal called New Creative Talent. See our blog Connecting Students with the Greeting Card industry for more information
- Feel free to pass this information to your course lectures or team.
- As an Individual.
- You don’t need to wait for your university to join. We will be featuring a section of portfolio pages in future blogs.
- Please contact us now as we will be short-listing portfolios during Aug 2024, please and include the information below to be considered:
- Name and contact number, your email and link to your work i.e. website
3. As a GCA member
- Calling Card 2024 Blog
- From his recent work with colleges, Uni’s and visits to degree shows Inc. New Designers Geoff is now short-listing a group of artists, illustrators and designers; and as last year will share their work in a forth coming New Creative Talent ’24 showcase blog. We’d love to hear if you have similar individuals to share, support and help build this resource.
- We also know a lot of good work is happening in the industry generally in this space, whether work placements and recruitment, new ranges being launched or sponsorship and Uni/retailer tie-ins. It’d be great to showcase and feature your good work too and hear your stories so we can promote and share experiences.
- Please feel get in touch with him directly geoffsanderson@mac.com
Geoff is an annual visitor to the creative graduate fair New Designers at London’s BDC (above), where he met and reviewed gradate portfolios graduates, as well as lectures and industry colleagues – whilst handing out information about the NCT project on behalf of the GCA (below).
Further Information
Visit the GCA jobs board for current industry vacancies https://www.gca.cards/jobs/
For greeting card publishers – see How to Recruit New Creative Talent
For collages and universities- See Connecting Students with the Greeting Card Industry
This GCA New Creative Talent project was launched in 2022, see the Secret to Creative Innovation and Succession Planning for more information, and these links to see more about GCA Open Call 2022
If you’re a GCA member keen to know more, or a student keen to learn more, read How to Get into the Greeting Card Industry . A project when we teamed up with the Illustration & Graphic Design team at the School of Creative Arts University of Hertfordshire. This includes a useful handout for schools and colleges which can be downloaded.
For GCA members wishing to visit their local school, college or University there is a presentation and toolkit in the members’ library that you can use – adding in your own slides to promote your brand.
For latest greeting card industry news and events see our blogs
To receive our monthly newsletter Sign up for our newsletter here
If you’re interesting in Becoming a Greeting Card Artist see this blog, with lots more tips and information in our members library.
If you’re interested in Working with an Artist’s Agent, see this blog.
*The Greeting Card Association Annual Market Report which covers UK greeting card sales for single greeting cards in 2021 compared to 2020. The report shows a strong ‘bounce back’ from 2020 when retail sales were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and closure of many non-essential retailers for long periods.
