AMERICAN GREETINGS / CARDSTORE

Delight, guaranteed. I was brought in for a year plus contract as Executive Creative Director to provide a complete brand strategy and UX design makeover of American Greetings' custom, print-on-demand card property: Cardstore.

I worked onsite with a small internal team and @museheadquarters to conduct an intensive short-term discovery process, and gain consensus from executive stakeholders on re-invigorated brand architecture, promise, personality, new logo, visual and editorial voice.

Working with the internal development team we launched an aligned UX strategy across all digital, print, packaging, and marketing touchpoints, including mobile and tablet apps.

The talk bubble became a key driving motif throughout the experience, encouraging the audience to customize everything in their own voice and express themselves. I also emphasized the paper textures, handwritten headlines, and handcrafted shapes to remind everyone of the power and emotional impact of creating, sending and receiving actual tactile printed paper cards in the mail.

I created a brand bible to memorialize the visual, voice, editorial and style editorial guidelines.

I planned and executed a launch party to announce the new brand, complete with a photo booth, the photos from which we created customized personal thank you cards sent to the attendees.

While I was on contract, I was also asked to provide concepts for the overall American Greetings brand evolution. My recommendations were to energize the overall presentation, simplifying the logo by owning "the rose," by itself—an idea that was fully adopted—and a redesigned responsive site inspired by the hand-drawn typography and crafty motifs used with Cardstore.