A R3
RESUMES
Getting
Carded
A search for new blood
When you care enough to send the
very best, as its saying goes, there is
Hallmark Cards, Inc., of Kansas
City, which pioneered greeting cards 77
years ago and now has a 40 per-
cent share of the market. And there are
also Cleveland-based American Greetings,
which has an estimated 30 percent of the
$3.4 billion business, and Cincinnati-based
Gibson Cards, which sells Garfield and
Walt Disney-character cards, among oth-
ers. But sales of traditional greeting cards
have plateaued in recent years, largely be-
cause of the emergence of "alternative"
designs first offered by individual artists
such as Sandra Boynton-marketed by Re-
cycled Paper Products in Chicago-and
smaller companies such as Blue Mountain
Arts, Inc., in Boulder, Colo. Targeted to the
maturing baby-boom generation, alterna-
tive cards are sometimes emotional and
often irreverent.
Now the powerhouses of the business are
retooling with new card lines of their
own-and looking for imaginative young
talent. (Blue Mountain is suing Hallmark
for "tradedress" infringement, claiming
that the industry giant copied the "look" of
some of its designs; Hallmark denies the
allegations.) Hallmark, American and Gib-
son are recruiting on campus and any-
where else fresh eyes and pens might be
found. Hallmark, for instance, counts a for-
mer aerobics instructor, a veteran writer of
the SCTV comedy show and a science-fic-
tion author among its 41 staff writers.
"We're just as likely to find a greeting-card
writer in business school or engineering
school as in liberal-arts school," says Caro-
len Collins, a spokesperson for Hallmark.
The only real job requirement is to be able
to "reflect common experiences" in a con-
cise, humorous manner.
No flowers: Today's greeting-card poets
don't necessarily spend their time writing
tightly rhymed, flowery verse. Instead,
many try to put an innovative spin on re-
petitive themes. "You try to keep up with
current culture. If you know who Paul
Shaffer and Mr. Ed are, then you're a step
ahead. The challenge is to make that have
something to do with your birthday," says
Dan Taylor, a 27-year-old Hallmark writer.
The work can be high-pressured. Taylor,
DAN WHITE
It helps to know what Paul Shaftor and Mr. Ed have in common: Hallmark's Taylor
who majored in theology at Lincoln Chris-
tian College, gets an assignment list of
captions to be written by a certain dead-
line. When the ideas do not come, he seeks
diversions. Taylor keeps his tape player
and cassettes of Prince, Springsteen and
the Ramones at the ready.
Greeting-card writers acknowledge cer-
tain creative frustrations. "There are
times when you have a great idea for a
card, but it can't be published because we
write to appeal to the greatest number of
people," says Beverly Cleveland, 27, an
assistant editor with Gibson. But Cleve-
land finds her duties as a card writer far
less monotonous than her previous experi-
ence working for an insurance company:
"I enjoy working with words. It's a nice
feeling to think you're helping someone to
say things not so easy to say face to face."
At Gibson, new writers serve as editorial
assistants for six months in order to accli-
mate themselves to the routines and pa-
rameters before they can join the compa-
ny's staff of 20 writers. Most writers in the
industry start at a low salary of about
$18,000, but those who stay with the com-
pany past the probationary period get sig-
nificant raises fairly quickly.
Steady work: Alternative cards have also
loosened some of the design restrictions on
commercial artists. "Up until fairly re-
cently, greeting cards were either flowers
or duck decoys. Then, all of a sudden,
somebody caught on to the idea that peo-
ple want something else," says Jack
Endewelt, the cochairman of the media
department at New York's School of Visu-
al Arts. What's more, Endewelt says, the
opportunities for illustrators at card com-
panies are unusual in that they offer a
steady job.
Recruiters look for artists with a certain
educational background. "We don't teach
people," says Mary Ellen Kint, director of
creative recruitment for American. "[Job
applicants] have to know layout and design
and how to use an airbrush." Kint says the
portfolios that catch her eye often contain
no greeting-card samples but exhibit a
style that will translate well to the work.
Those who make the best card illustrators,
according to Hallmark's Collins, are car-
toonists, who "know how to set up a
Rainbows and teddy bears: Gibson's Tagel
NOVEMBER 1987 ,
32 NEWSWEEKONCAMPUS