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Q: How are you? Q: Who makes these cards? Q: Are these anti-cards? Q: These cards are just black ink on colored paper. Dude, I can make them at home on my printer. Why pay $2.50? Q: Where do the background designs come from? Q: What does all that stuff by the "recycled" logo on the back of my Sappycard mean? Q: Do you have a card for such-and-such an occasion? Q: How are you? A: Fine, thanks. Q: Who makes these cards? A: My name is Timothy. I come up with the words and designs. But it's not just me. It's all the relationships I've ever had or might have in the future. The so-called "social expression" industry is what it is because of what we allow ourselves to express to each other, as social animals using a system of signs. So there's a sort of built-in collectivity. But not only that: a graphic-designer friend helps me turn the designs into computer files. A printer in Detroit prints them. A web-designer friend helps me make the website. And somehow in the end it all comes together. Q: Are these anti-cards? A: No. Sappycards are not anti-cards. Leave it to corporate advertisers to perfect that kind of posturing. Go ahead and buy into the Sappycards style or attitude if you must. Realize your "lifestyle" by sending greeting cards that make fun of greeting cards. But always remember: they're still greeting cards. Q: These cards are just black ink on colored paper. Dude, I can make them at home on my printer. Why pay $2.50? A: Nothing would make me more happy than you going off and making your own cards, like I did. Except maybe you buying a few of mine first. And if you do (buy a Sappycard) you're getting a limited edition print with the words of an award-winning writer set over photocopied textures of mysterious found objects. Each design is printed on archival quality 100% Post-Consumer recycled cardstock, scored for easy folding, and comes with a matching envelope. Many of these papers are only available in cartons, which means quantities of 500 huge sheets, for a few hundred dollars. And the high-res half-tone backgrounds with text overtop won't print so well on your desktop printer. Plus, you're most likely buying the card from a local, independent business that supports artists and makes life more interesting in your community. These businesses tend to be less bad than others. Q: Where do the background designs come from? A: The background designs of Series I-III are based on minimally retouched photocopies of old book covers, stitching patterns, textiles, doormats, and other ordinary items commonly found in basements and dumpsters. Series IV features what my local Mailpiece Design Analyst termed "security screens," those designs they put on the insides of envelopes so you can't read through them. Q: What does all that stuff by the "recycled" logo on the back of my Sappycard mean? A: On the backs of cards in Series I-III, it says, "just because it says , doesn't mean it is." In other words, that logo has come to mean almost nothing. When recycling became the fashion, many paper mills simply used the waste they were already saving from their production processes and called the result "recycled." What really matters when buying recycled is a paper's post-consumer content. Most Sappycards, and all of the envelopes that go with them, are 100% Post-Consumer Waste (PCW). And all of our papers are either Processed Chlorine Free (PCF), Elemental Chlorine Free (ECF), or Totally Chlorine Free (TCF), and printed with vegetable-based inks. But there are still problems with post-consumer, or "downcycled" content. We need to do more. Recycling's main accomplishment is to make consumers who claim to care about it feel good about ourselves as we persist in our fundamentally eco-unfriendly ways. Q: Do you have a card for such-and-such an occasion? A: Towards the bottom of the homepage, I've included a list of suggestions for cards to send for specific occasions or relationships. But I'll never print a card that's targeted at one specific occasion or relationship. (Or "market.") People feel all kinds of ways about all kinds of people at all kinds of times, not just the traditional "card-giving" holidays. Use your imagination. Give someone a card they wouldn't expect, when they wouldn't expect it, and I think it'll mean more. |