Greetings Card - What, When and How :
Whenever you need to wish your friend or acquaintances happy and
belated birthday, or wish your near and dear ones merry
Christmas, or send your beloved one happy valentines day wishes
or just say hello or give a "get well soon" message to your
bosom friend , you just go to a greetings card outlet or visit
an online greetings card website and send the desired card. Have
you ever wondered what greetings card is all about and how did
it originate. If you have the desire to know, this article is
for you.
So, lets start with what is a greeting card. Originally,
greeting cards derive from postcards ( which are single sided
without the fold ) and are an illustrated, folded card usually
featuring a message of greeting or other sentiment. They can be
either printed or handmade. Now, with the advent of Internet
though, virtual greetings cards have evolved which doesnot fit
into the above-mentioned definition. Although greeting cards are
usually given on special occasions such as birthdays, Christmas
or other holidays, they are also sent on 'non-occasions' to say
'hello' or 'thank you'. They are manufactured and/or hand-made
by hundreds of companies big and small. Hallmark Cards and
American Greetings are the largest producers of greeting cards
in the U.S. It's the UK, where more cards per head are sent than
any other nation. The UK continues as a world leader in this
area, as well as leading the world in the region of greeting
card design.
What laid the foundation for the greeting card industry
and when and how did it all began ?
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 early 1400s, handmade paper greeting cards were being
exchanged in Europe. The Germans are known to have printed New
Year's greetings from woodcuts as early as 1400, and handmade
paper Valentines were being exchanged in various parts of Europe
in the early to mid-1400s.
However, 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 and mechanization.
This trend continued, fuelled by new trends like Christmas
cards, the first of which appeared in published form in London
in 1843 when Sir Henry Cole hired artist John Calcott Horsley to
design a holiday card that he could send to his friends and
acquaintances. Technical developments like color lithography in
1930 propelled the manufactured greeting card industry forward.
During the 1980s the trend began to turn, with consumers
increasing looking for greeting cards that were differentiated
from the standard offering. In the late 1990s the market was
clearly beginning to separate in to three different segments:
1. handmade and premium cards
2. mass-manufactured cards
3. e-cards
So, this is all about how the greetings card industry begun and
flourished. Though the current trend is to send greetings
through e-cards, there is the need to sustain the traditional
greetings card industry and maintaining the age-old tradition of
sending greetings card via conventional means.