Gift Card Designing — Edition Insights

A Call for Local Motifs

Lemos insists that a card's appeal depends on how well its "idea and wording meet with the personal or local trend of the community." He mocks the absurdity of sending a California card with a "home-coming sleigh scene" and "snow-burdened roofs" to someone in a warm climate. The remedy is to "use motifs and scenes and wording which create the charm of our home section." This argument is not merely nostalgic; it is a practical critique of the mass-production model that dominated the early twentieth-century greeting card industry. Lemos wants American designers to compete by offering something the foreign factories cannot: authentic, place-specific imagery.

Lettering as the Foundation

Lemos devotes considerable attention to lettering, calling it "the most important part" of card design. He reassures readers that lettering "need not be approached with fear and trembling," and recounts how students who initially "shunned lettering because they thought it mechanical and laborious" became so enthusiastic they "had almost to be bribed to do anything else." He invokes the "old masters and artist-craftsmen" to argue that lettering can be as artistic as the designer wishes. This emphasis on hand-drawn lettering reflects the Arts and Crafts movement's values, positioning the card designer as a craftsman rather than a mere printer.

Practical Design Categories

The latter part of the excerpt catalogs specific design approaches, from "full panel decorations" to "free symbol and text." Lemos lists ten arrangements in Plate 5, then moves through plates showing work by high school students, art school students, and personal greetings. He notes that some cards were "hand colored" and that designs for cut linoleum benefit from "strong, well massed" compositions. The tone shifts from persuasive to instructional, offering concrete advice: choose an arrangement, substitute personal elements, keep designs in "simple broad masses." The range—from silhouettes for younger artists to poster-type figures for advanced students—suggests a manual aimed at teachers as much as individual designers.

Lemos writes with the directness of a teacher who has watched students struggle with lettering and has seen the results of thoughtful design. His book is less a gallery of finished cards than a set of principles for making them. Readers interested in the history of graphic design or the Arts and Crafts movement will find here a practical document that connects aesthetic ideals to the everyday problem of finding a card that feels personal.

The little argument for hand-tooled lettering and local warmth in Gift Card Designing always makes me think of how far we’ve drifted from patient making. There’s a quiet ache in that. It reminds me, unexpectedly, of sitting with The Printed Book: Its History, Illustration and Adornment From the Days of Gutenberg to the Present Time — Story, Setting & Ideas, where the same devotion to craft whispers from every old page. Both feel like letters from a slower hand.