Black History Month

Black History Month in October gives us an opportunity to celebrate and highlight the increasing variety of greeting cards available celebrating Black history.

To find cards that celebrate cultural diversity, and designers and publishers that specialise in cards for Black loved ones, click here and visit our Members’ Directory and search under Black.

This blog shares stories and information from some GCA members, and how we are working as an industry to serve Black card consumers.

To find out more about Diversity and Inclusion in the GCA click here, see below for this years GCA tie up with Sainsbury’s.

GCA 2021 Initiative with Sainsburys

In 2021 the GCA teamed up with Sainsburys and ran a Design A Card For Black History Month competition over Instagram. The initiative was led by Mark Callaby, joint-owner of Ohh Deer and chair of the GCA’s Diversity and Inclusion sub-committee.

The initial call out for entries went out to the trade through our newsletter, trade press, and across our social media. We received nearly 1,000 designs which was fantastic and made Sainsburys selection of 26 very difficult!

Mark hosted an initial review meeting with the Sainsbury’s team, attending the meeting at Ohh Deer’s Loughborough offices were Sainsbury’s buyer Emma Tanner, GCA Council Member Adriana Lovesy and GCA’s CEO Amanda Fergusson.

The final 26 designs will be on sale in 108 Sainsbury’s stores in October 2021, displayed in a dedicated shipper to mark Black History Month, see here for full list of participating stores and more details on the competition.

The story has continued to receive coverage in the greeting card trade press, see PGBuzz sharing details of the judging process, and then more coverage on 17th September when the winners were announced. There will be a further PR campaign to highlight these designs to consumers once they go on sale in store.

See below for the design entries!

Below is some background from other GCA members, who talk about their inspiration, and changes they are making in the range of cards they produce and sell.

African Prints

African prints are the inspiration for many of AfroTouch Design‘s greeting cards. The ‘Squad Goals’ card (right) is embellished with laser cut African Print Fabric. In many West African countries, traditionally these beautiful bold fabrics were used to identify relatives at celebrations such as weddings. Today with the ever changing face of social traditions, the wearing of African Print fabrics has become a sign of belonging and cultural identity amongst families and friends at different celebratory events. By wearing the same print fabric, groups of people are able to establish a sense of belonging. These fabric print patterns are the heart of all  AfroTouch Design cards.

A gap in the market

Many greeting card publishers get involved in designing and producing greeting cards because they see a gap in the market for the type of cards that they’d like to send, this  is certainly true of many of our black publisher members. For example Nicola Lespeare’s eponymous brand “…was born out of a vision to transform the lack of visible representation and availability of Black character cards within the greeting cards industry” says Nicola. “I’m dedicated to making this vision a reality by using my love of illustration to create imaginative cards that celebrate and elevate black women, men and children”. Nicola Lespeare’s illustrated cards demonstrate the fabulous versatility of afro hair and are predominantly influenced by Black women styled in on-trend colourful looks that beautifully accentuate deep skin tones. 

Increasing representation

Huetribe is a diverse greetings card company which aims to increase representation of different races and sexualities on UK greeting cards. Founder Tineka Smith has been featured in Huffington Post, Mashable, Yahoo, PG Buzz and the BBC speaking on diverse representation, and Huetribe became the first publisher carried by retailer Scribbler that focuses on representation for both race and sexuality.

Aisling Crosland, Head of Design at Scribbler, said “Scribbler has worked for years now with designers to include diversity in their ranges, this summer they pledged to try to do better and go further. After conversations with some of their existing designers, such as Cherelle from Kitsch Noir and Tineka from Hue Tribe, it became clear that simply having these designs wasn’t enough. Eager to give the designers a push to their customers, as well as help build up diversity in their ranges, Scribbler ran a “Support black designers” campaign. Designers taking part in the campaign were given the opportunity to appear on homepage banners, social, marketing, and more, with sales made during the campaign earning them an increased royalty as well as profits being donated to the Damilola Taylor Trust on behalf of Scribbler and the designers themselves”.

Diversity in the card industry

The GCA brought together retailers and publishers earlier this year to discuss the issue of  diversity in the card industry, see report in trade magazine PGBuzz, and understand how the industry continue to support this growth area. Britain leads the world in greeting card innovation and design, a pattern that looks set to continue!