The Passing of a Tradition

We are in the midst of witnessing the passing of a once-popular form of social expression, a given way of life for so many years. Greeting cards, once the chosen medium for wishes and communications to friends, relatives and associates, are becoming somewhat antiquated and mundane. There are many contributing factors to the decline of greeting card usage as we knew it. The technology of E-greetings, text messaging and social media such as Facebook are contributing factors. Part of it is also the increased cost of postage, but probably the biggest single factor is the abandonment of tradition. The practice at one time was to give a greeting card if you couldn’t afford a gift or to give a greeting card along with the gift. No longer. Additionally Christmas cards, the top-selling seasonal category, are seeing continually declining sales. An industry that once enjoyed a dozen major publishers and hundreds of competitive, smaller publishers is now down to two majors and an assortment of smaller companies struggling to survive. From purely a personal creative point of view it’s unfortunate that writers, artists, designers, illustrators and photographers are losing a creative outlet, one that was enjoyable, challenging and extremely lucrative. Many artists supported their personal fine art endeavors by working in the commercial field of greeting card design and art illustration. A void not easily replaced.


In America sending greeting cards is a tradition that goes back over 200 years! Louis Prang, a German immigrant who started a small lithographic business near Boston in 1856 , is credited with the start of the greeting card industry in America. Within ten years of founding his firm, he had perfected the color lithographic process to a point where his reproductions of great paintings surpassed those of other graphic arts craftsmen. In the early 1870s , Prang began publishing deluxe editions of Christmas cards, which found a ready market in England. In 1875, he introduced the first complete line of Christmas cards to the American public. Prang's cards reached their height of popularity in the early 1890s , when cheap imitative imports began to flood the market, eventually forcing Prang to abandon his greeting card publishing business. Between 1890 and 1906, there was a marked decline in U.S. greeting card production. In the years immediately following 1906 , the domestic business climate for greeting cards gathered momentum, and a number of today's leading publishers were founded. Most of the cards by these fledgling U.S. publishers bore little relation to Prang's elaborate creations. The expressed sentiment was the predominant element; the illustrated portions were secondary. Following World War I , new publishers continued to enter the field and accelerated competition produced important innovations in printing processes, art techniques and decorative treatments for greeting cards. In the early 1930s , publishers increasingly adopted the use of color lithography, a move that would propel the U.S. greeting card industry toward continued growth and expansion. During World War II , the industry rallied for the war effort, helping the government sell war bonds and providing cards for the soldiers overseas. This period also marked the beginning of its close relationship with the U.S. Postal Service. By the 1950s , the studio card – a long, slim card with a humorous punch line – appeared on the scene to firmly establish the popularity of humor in American greeting cards. During the 1980s , alternative cards began to appear – cards not made for a particular holiday or event, but as a more general communication or wish to another. The popularity of “non-occasion" cards continued to swell through the years. Massive growth in electronic technology, and burgeoning consumer use of the Internet, gave birth to the electronic greeting card or E-card in the late 1990s . The development of this entirely new medium for card-sending diversified greeting card communications within the industry, producing new E-card publishers as well as E-greeting product offerings by traditional publishers.


Jim Plesh’s career spans over fifty years in the social expression/paper products industry. Starting as a designer for American Greetings and then going from art director of Fairfield Publishing Co., to Creative Director VP of Rust Craft Greetings, to Creative VP of Paramount Greetings, he then founded Plesh Creative Group, Inc., recognized as one of the leading creative firms in the industry.

He’s been involved in the creation of over forty-five thousand original greeting card designs and editorial content as well as founder of numerous social expression creative properties.