Disabled Card Designers Sought

Ran across this article today. If anyone has any experience with Courage Cards let me know:
Courage Cards Conducting Nationwide Art Search for 2010 Holiday Season.

Freebies

Here's a bunch of freebies I ran across. While most of them claim to be for commercial use, always check term details before using them for manufacturing designs.

Free Leaf Textures



Free Photoshop Swirl Brushes



Free Metal Textures



Photoshop Grunge Brushes

Greeting Card Licensing Information from the UK

Ran across this great site on card licensing. Here's are excerpts from 2 articles:


What is Licensing?

For licensors, the advantages include being able to enter new markets (product or geographical) which would be unfeasible with it's own resources or capabilities. It is a way to generate new revenue streams, often with little involvement or additional financial or other resource implications and can be an excellent earner.

Take, for example, a charity Christmas card licensing deal: the charity agrees to allow its name (brand) to be used on greeting cards in return for a percentage of the trade price. This way it raises its profile on the high street and earns additional income, without having to make any investment in product, or taking the risks involved in publishing the cards itself. In this case it is the publisher which is the licensee.

Greeting card publishers are becoming increasingly involved in the licensing market, both as licensees and licensors.
Article continued.....

Interesting Facts About the Greeting Card Industry in the UK

85% of all cards are bought by women!

The UK card industry is acknowledged to be ten years ahead of the rest of the world in terms of design.

There are approximately 800 publishers in the UK, most of which are small businesses with fewer than five employees. Out of the 400 members of the GCA over 280 are small/micro businesses.

It’s a creative industry with strong bases in London, Nottinghamshire and the North, especially Yorkshire and Lancashire, where it has replaced many of the heavy manufacturing industries as a major employers.

Greeting cards are stocked in more types of outlet than any other product – with one in six retailers stocking greeting cards.

No other country has such a tradition of card sending or card display in the home - the sending and receiving of cards is an important part of our culture.

The commercial Christmas card was invented in 1846 by Sir Henry Cole, the chief organiser of the Great Exhibition, pioneer of the penny post and founder of the V&A Museum.

One of Sir Henry’s first Christmas cards, sent to his Grandmother was recently sold at auction for £22,500.

Greeting card making is also the number one craft hobby, according to Crafts Beautiful, the top consumer craft magazine, which receives more enquiries about greeting cards than any other subject.
Article Continued....

More Great Color Resources

This is a follow up to my last posting on fantastic color resources. Just spotted more on the Design Magazine Website
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Check My Color

Gray Bit

Contrast-A: Find Accessible Color Combinations

ColourLovers Copaso

Color Munki

Online color Palette Creator – Aviary Toucan

Easy RGB

Colr

Color Palette Generator

FireWheel Design color burn

Color Mod

ColorZilla For Firefox

Color fields Colr Pickr

Book Review: All About Color

I ran across Janice Lindsay's Book All About Colour when looking for resources on how to learn about color. Color is often taken for granted as something that comes natural or we just choose "what we like", but I find that sometimes if one of my card designs look weak, that just by changing one color, the whole card looks like a new design.

Until I found her book, I never actually thought of color as an academic subject. She carries us through the entire history of color, from the beginning, and her first section is called "Before Colour was Colour" and examines different basic colors, giving them special and equal attention.

A Canadian color designer, Janice runs a consulting company called "PINK". In her book she answers such questions as: Can changing a color change our experience of our space? Why is white the hardest color? What makes a color beautiful? Why do certain colors make us feel happy? and How are color trends born?

It's really great to be able to have a reference book on how color affects our lives, something we rarely think about, but after reading her data on color research, now I know it's true not just for me, or for artists, but for everyone.