Cards. More cards. Cards as as far as the eye can see. That’s more-or-less what you’d expect to see at a trade show all about the greetings card industry, and PG Live at the Business Design Centre in Islington didn’t disappoint on that front.
But there’s actually more to it than three floors of cards! Here’s what we learned when our team headed down to the show.
1. It’s not just cards!
Didn’t expect this right after the intro, did you! The show is made up of lots of individual booths from creators and small companies. As well as (lots of) cards, we saw booths with other kinds of commercially-minded design too: posters, wedding stationery, and even just delightful envelopes for those cards to go inside!
2. Our creators were there…
Some of the booths were helmed by thortful creators! We bumped into Lucy Driver, David Ricicle, Dean Morris, Bold & Bright, amongst others.
3. …and some (hopefully) future creators were too.
We met loads of new creators who aren’t on thortful – but we’d really like to get them on board! One of the great things about PG Live is we can meet emerging talent and tell them about how fantastically cool and wonderful at dinner parties we are.
4. It was a great for feedback
We got a lot of great feedback from the thortful creators we met; it’s brilliant to be able to have these conversations in person. We use everything we hear back from creators to improve their thortful experience.
We also learned that creators love checking their dashboard every morning to see the sales go up!
5. We felt the love
It was so inspiring to hear success stories about selling with thortful.
6. Illustrative and traditional designs are back
Judging by what we saw, the trends in card design are heading back towards illustrative, heartfelt, traditional, and cute styles. But it’s not a case of old designs coming back – we saw some really unique work. Look out for more of these on our catalogue.
7. We got goody bags!
Ok, so they didn’t contain a car, this isn’t the Oscars. But we did get all sorts of interesting bits and bobs, including some… you guessed it… cards. Lovely ones!
