Focus on

Contemporary by design

Jack Wilson, Paper Salad’s Operations Director, talks to Greetings Today about the card publisher, its history, designs and its latest creations

Tell us a little about Paper Salad. Paper Salad was set up by Karen and Claire, two surface pattern design and textiles students who graduated in 2000. The next five years were spent designing wallpaper, textiles and other paper products while regularly exhibiting at trade shows in New York. It was after working on a greeting card project for a British company that the idea of becoming publishers themselves was formed… Now 17 years-old, we have a well-established business supplying greeting cards across the globe. Does Paper Salad have a particular style when it comes to design? Our designs fall into the contemporary category and are still created in our studio. Starting from hand-drawn paintings, illustrations and always using hand-drawn fonts created by ourselves, this puts the wheels in motion for new design ideas to come to fruition.

Tell us about your artists. While concentrating on the design work, Karen and Claire are currently training two in-house junior designers, Rosie and Helena. They both had previously worked in other departments for Paper Salad and so are familiar with different aspects of the company’s operations. Rosie and Helena had always shown an interest in the design side of things and understand the style and branding of our products. We saw their potential and decided to offer them the opportunity to form a design team, to take the workload off Karen and Claire. Ultimately, this has enabled us to offer more newness to our customers, while giving us enough time to also concentrate on work for our collaborations with Glick and Emotional Rescue.

Tell us about your partnership with Glick. Twelve years and numerous Henries later, we continue to launch new product with Glick. Currently on a streak with four of those awards coming consecutively, why change a winning formula? It was in 2009 when we attended The RETAS that we first met Becky Dobson (Glick director) and struck up conversation around the dinner table. At the time we had six gift wrap designs, which were selling well, but we had issues coping with the high demand, as our main priority was greeting cards. After forming our relationship

with Becky and discussing the possibility of a collaboration, we became Glick’s first licensed brand. Glick had all of the manufacturing expertise - which we didn’t have - along with proven credentials to make the opportunity in front of us an easy decision. Since then we’ve experienced many triumphs together and we hope that the success continues.

What about new ranges? We have a new children’s range launching at PG Live called Are We Nearly There Yet?. To bring something new to the table, these cards are tri-folded and die-cut, accompanied by a new 125x175 envelope design. We’re also launching additional designs into our ever-popular Jamboree range. These will cover general birthday captions.

“We have a new children’s range launching at PG Live called Are We Nearly There Yet?. To bring something new to the table these cards are tri-folded and die-cut’’

How many ranges do you offer? There are 15 ranges for our customers to select from, which are all showcased in our 2022 brochure.

What are your best selling ranges? Our best selling range is definitely Hunky Dory, followed by Jamboree and Jumbo Jamboree. The bright neon colours, foil finishes and embossing help these designs stand out and catch the eye of the consumer. Do you have any eco-friendly credentials you would like to mention? Having launched our new mini-card range, Dinkies, at Spring Fair in February, these have been extremely popular. Five cards and five envelopes presented in a brown fleck box, are 100% recyclable and free from any plastic packaging.

We offer all of our ranges unwrapped should the customer request it. There are two ways we can do this; envelope nested inside the card or card clasps can be applied. Are you planning to exhibit at any shows this year? After a successful Spring Fair, we are hoping for more of the same at PG Live in June and Autumn Fair in September. Anything else you’d like to add? Venturing into the Humour and Sentiment market thanks to our collaboration with Emotional Rescue has been fun, while gaining new experiences within the industry due to the different target audiences. The collections we have created have been a great success, winning our first Henry award together last year for best Contemporary Words and sentiments range, as we continue to add to the portfolio. So be on the lookout for more newness coming very soon! 0161 427 0001 admin@papersalad.co.uk www.papersalad.com www.greetingstoday.co.uk 37