Market Research

Market research is the next stage, this is going to research both greeting cards and fine art prints to see what is selling as well as conducting some of my own research to gather as much useful and applicable information to help best craft a product that will sell.

Greeting Cards

To begin with I’m looking into the greeting card market, one of the main trends at the moment is simplicity, this means simple designs with no overcrowding of elements on the design, it can also apply to the use of colour and keeping a minimal colour pallet to keep things simple and could easily be applied to my work.

The next trend mentioned a lot throughout the web is foil, they work to add a more finished professional look to the cards and feel, it’s been around for years and it simply keep getting more popular and can use used in almost any design to elevate it making it a potentially great trend I could apply to my own card. Personalisation is also mentioned a lot, from smart monograms to custom cards as they sell of cards on the internet grows so does the personalisation possibilities; this while it may be popular will be almost impossible to apply to my work since a large section of it will we sold in person making it unfortunately irrelevant to my design. Natural papers and environmentally friendly cards are also huge as they offer both a nicer naturally feeling product while also being kind to the environment which more and more people are caring about, this could be easily applied to my work by simply choosing a natural paper to print onto (PsPrint, 2018).

Bold designs are also very hot right now, making using of the simplistic designs previously mention bold designs with plenty of contrast are booming, this is something that I could take inspiration from though it is less likely to fit into my style it could still be applied. 

Next is botanical prints, tropical and Victorian inspired art work is huge at the moment, this also reflects in colours as dark greens, dark blues, rich reds are very popular, especially when interspersed with white; this is something that fits very much into my style and could definitely be a good path to take, especially since I have some previous experience with botanical work. For colour though bold bright colours as well as neon’s are also very in, this mixes practically well with the simplistic design to create a very bold card (Blog.printed.com, 2018); this is something I could use since I do work in bright and bold occasionally but in this I am preferring the botanical design route and so this is something I am unlikely to follow. I also looked into how popular Christmas cards are as I will be selling my cards in the Christmas time and it could be a great train to jump on to in order to help sales, and I found that out of the 1.6 billion in card sales every year 1 billion of that alone is Christmas cards, with 9 million being packets of cards (Greetingcardassociation.org.uk, 2019); this cements it and I am definitely doing cards both individual and offering them as a pack.

After conducting this internet search I had a look around some different card shops, both online and offline as well as large chain stores and smaller artistic shops and found all previously mentioned trends in the shops, I also noticed an abundance of loose brush style calligraphy for wording on the cards which is something I could use if decided to add lettering, there was also a lot of foil like previous mentioned and bright colours, as well as the dark moodier colours reaffirming previous research.

Blog.printed.com. (2019). Your definitive guide to Greeting Card trends for 2019 – Printed.com Blog. [online] Available at: https://blog.printed.com/greeting-card-trends-for-2019/ [Accessed 7 Aug. 2019].

Greetingcardassociation.org.uk. (2019). Facts and Figures | GCA | The Greeting Card Association. [online] Available at: http://www.greetingcardassociation.org.uk/resources/for-publishers/the-market/facts-and-figures [Accessed 6 Aug. 2019].

PsPrint. (2018). New Greeting Card Design and Printing Trends. [online] Available at: https://www.psprint.com/resources/greeting-card-design-printing-trends/ [Accessed 7 Aug. 2019].

Before officially deciding on what to choose to do for my cards I decided to do a survey to hear more of what the audience wants and to gain more information. In the survey I decided to ask three questions, firstly ‘What style of card would you most likely choose?’ this is to help figure out the taste of the audience, next was ‘Do you prefer cards in pack or individual?’ this was to test my previous research as if it’s true its something I will really need to incorporate; and finally ‘How many Christmas cards do you send each year?’ this is to get a gauge on just how many cards people by and how important the amount they send is in comparison to what sort of cards they buy. For the first question the results where a bit mixed with ‘darker colours, gold, but still modern’ taking the lead with 29.2% of the votes, second being ‘traditional, plain colours, verse’ with 25% of votes, then third ‘modern, bold, bright’ with 20.8% of votes; the humour and cutesy options made up the rest of the votes split between them. With pack vs individual 70% prefer packs, this backs up the previous research confirming this, and finally on how many cards where sent the majority of people said 8-12 cards, with other large majorities also sending 25+ , 12-16, and 1-3. This shows me that people are certainly interesting in packs and makes that a definitely avenue to go down, as well as the dark, gold foil type Christmas card still being the most popular which also confirmed part of my research. This leads me to choose create a set of three designed Christmas cards featuring dark and botanical patterns with potentially gold foiling in order maximise sales. 

Art Prints

Next to look the art prints, now since they will be commercial art and made and sold to be hung up for this I’m going to look into current home décor trends. On the main trends at the moment is the minimalist, with simply un-overcrowded spaces colour pallets with only the range of one or two colours, this also fits into the Scandinavian trend which is still ever popular and champions the minimalistic look with certain design features (Kelly, 2018). 

Another very popular style is botanical, with lots of nature inspired furnishings with house plants and botanical themes wall paper and prints. This also fits in well with the popular colour trends at the moment which are focuses around dark brooding colours such as pantones ‘nights watch’ which is a dark earthy green and one of the post popular colours or the year (Lee, 2018). Though out this research the same themes kept popping up time and time again assuring me of their importance, which is great as they match the same sort of trends in cards, with the same sort of colours and styles which means the plan to create three botanical piece of artwork for prints and cards is still strong.

 These looks where yet again backed up by looking at furniture and home decor shops and what they were selling, it all matched the previous made assumptions, with right greens and blues as well as an overabundance of botanical and natural patterns also present.

Kelly, T. (2018). Home decor trends for 2019 – we predict the key looks for interiors. [online] Ideal Home. Available at: https://www.idealhome.co.uk/news/home-decor-trends-2018-191244 [Accessed 7 Aug. 2019].

Lee, A. (2018). Experts Tell Us the Design Trends That Are In and Out in 2019. [online] ELLE Decor. Available at: https://www.elledecor.com/design-decorate/trends/g23550602/design-trends-2019/?slide=3 [Accessed 7 Aug. 2019].