Occasions - Typography based Stationery

Today i went and did some market research in a variety of card shops, to get a feel for the trends that are in fashion at the moment and to see they range of products that can be produced and for what what kind of audiences. I visited Wilkinsons, Clintons cards, WHSmiths, Paperchase, M&S and Muji. Below is a break down of what is currently available in each store:

Wilkinsons-
Obvious red and white for Christmas or a silver foil for a special touch, generic, cheap looking gaudy cards and bad typography (fonts and use of them)

Clintons Cards -
They have a range of cards that have numbers and text cut out, a wide variety of flitter, hologram paper, silver foil on cards, papercut sections from cards, but only in big sections, nothing delicate, raised text (using foam pads), a massive colour variety (some tasteful and sophisticated but mostly bright and loud and they always put colour over embossing, no blind embossing.

WHSmiths -
They have a range of cards that have numbers and text cut out, a wide variety of flitter, hologram paper, silver foil on cards, papercut sections from cards, that is slightly more tasteful than Clintons, less colour and colours that are used are more demure and tasteful, more expensive than Clintons and Wilkinsons, alot of white, silver and pastel colours, but still have a certain few areas that are quite tacky, a few designs that include a kind of collage type design, with layers of illustrations and small jewels and thread, a few raised text designs, embossing, simple text and simple fonts seem to be used more and the other fonts seem to be cursive calligraphic hand drawn typefaces.

Paperchase -
Heavily type based, lots of hand drawn typography, detailed cut sections on cards, embossed using more tasteful colour palettes and better quality card stock, sets of cards for charity, bold, modern designs, quite good, quality use of fonts typefaces and typography.

M&S -
More expensive, more tasteful colour palettes, packs or sets of small square cards, delicate die cut eaxamples, use of foil and flitter is reserved for specific tiny details, simple typefaces, hand drawn script fonts and simple designs using muted pastel colours and a more simplified layout of design.

Muji -
Limited cards available, majority of them 3D, pop up and simple Christmas icons, simple Christmas colour palettes - red/white/green, BUT did have some interesting pop up city scape cards (London, Tokyo, Paris etc) small, square, closes flat and is all one colour card.

Below are some designers i found while looking around the shops. ( i found their information on the back of the cards they created)

Lingdesign
paperlinkcards.co.uk
cardmix.co.uk
Kirsten Burke
paperhouse.co.uk
talking-pictures.co.uk
Urban graphicstock greeting cards
icon-art.com
caroline gardner
lesser spotted.com
fivedollarshake
velvet olive
emma davies
themonsterfactory.com
lipinternational.com
bluebell333
tracks publishing limited

{I will have new posts about my favourite designs, from some of the websites above, that i think work and are appropriate to this brief later}