The winner of the On the Cards student greeting card design competition – Luna Paszliewicz from Nottingham Trent University – has seen her creative dreams become a reality as her winning card design concept has been developed into real products and are now on sale in four flagship Paperchase stores.
Luna’s Herby Friends range has debuted in Paperchase’s Tottenham Court Road, Glasgow, Manchester and Nottingham Paperchase stores.
The On the Cards competition organised by Paper Rose/The Art Group, GF Smith, Sherwood Group and Paperchase with support from the GCA and PG, was conceived to highlight the opportunities within the greeting card industry to under graduates.
Luna’s winning entry, Herby Friends, is a card concept based on vegetable pun illustrations of a vegetable or herb, including seeds for the featured plant, all printed on environmentally-friendly board.
Luna spent time developing the concept with the Paper Rose/The Art Group team before Sheffield-based greeting card printers Loxleys produced the cards using environmentally-friendly methods and materials.
As Philippa Phipps, senior designer of Paper Rose/The Art Group explains: “Luna’s original idea was to use paper that was impregnated with seeds. However, this was too problematic technically. We looked into how to provide a small number of seeds with each card and the seed discs were the perfect solution. They are easy to plant and easy to include in each card.”
While not all of herbs that featured on Luna’s original prototype designs were available in seed disc form she worked up some new illustrations. Luna has also created some simple ‘how to’ illustrations that are printed inside each card, along with a link to more detailed planting information if needed.
Loxleys printed the cards on GF Smith board that is made from recycled coffee cups (Extract, made in the Lake District by the James Cropper mill), using vegetable inks. The envelope were made from 100% recycled material and the cards come in compostable bags.
Both Luna and Emily Rogers (who came second in the competition), visited Paper Rose/The Art Group to do a week’s work placement. “We really enjoyed having them to work with us in the studio,” says Philippa. “Both worked on their own ranges as well as helping with the usual workload.”
