Achi news desk-
A Calgary greeting card designer has won a major international award for one of her designs.
Emily Skinner, owner of Pedaller Designs, won the Louie Award for best children’s birthday card under $5.50 USD at the annual awards ceremony held in San Francisco in April.
“We like to think of the Louie Awards as the Oscars of the greeting card industry,” says Skinner.
“There is an incredible pool of talent, so it was extremely humbling to be recognized by my peers for my artwork.”
The Louie Awards are an annual event hosted by the Greeting Card Association. According to Alyson O’Connor, chair of the awards committee, over 100 card makers joined the annual celebration.
Card makers, ranging from single-artist studios like Skinner’s Pedaller Designs to greeting card giants like Carlton and Hallmark, compete for top honors in the field.
“It’s exciting when you get to a final against a bigger company,” O’Connor said.
“When you put your cards into Louie’s rewards, you have to hide all the branding. So, when people look at cards, they don’t know who the manufacturer is, they don’t know if it came from, you know, Hallmark or Pedaller Designs. You really are judged on the content.”
‘Hope your birthday screams’
Skinner’s winning design features a trio of playful monsters celebrating a party with the slogan, “Hope Your Birthday is a Scream.”
“They were really fun to draw. I was thinking about my own boys when they were young,” Skinner said.
“I’m a mother of four boys and so the boy-mother experience is always kind of in the back of my mind. Sometimes celebrating with a house full of little boys eating cake is a bit of a scream, and I just knew something playful like those cute little monsters and the things that would have made them smile.”
“Hope Your Birthday is a Scream” card designed by Pedaller Designs. (Louie Awards/Greeting Card Association)
Skinner says designing cards for holidays like Easter, Halloween or Christmas requires some lateral thinking because of the industry’s buying schedule. At the beginning of May, she is already drawing a deer for cards that celebrate the upcoming Christmas season.
“The greeting card industry is always a season or two ahead of the buying cycle. So many of my stockists are already buying their holiday stock. So you know, we’re planning Christmas in the spring and spring on Halloween,” he said.
Skinner designs her cards on a tablet computer in her home studio and sends her files to a commercial printer for production.
“I work with a local printer here in Calgary, so I don’t do a lot of mass production,” says Skinner.
“I run in pretty fine print, just so I have a lot of control over the quality and to make sure everything is perfect.”
The greeting card industry topped $6 billion in sales last year, and according to O’Connor, despite online competition from email, e-cards and social media, sales of traditional greeting cards are growing.
“There’s nothing that will ever, I don’t think, replace the beauty of a handwritten note,” O’Connor said.
“As long as there is a postal service to deliver, there will always be value in contacting someone through something as tactile as a card.”
Skinner Cards can be purchased through her Pedaller Designs website.
