Sassy Greeting Card Company Gets Kickstart

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Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Maggie Lange, GoLocalProv Contributor

The figures on the greeting cards that Jennifer Adler creates for her company, Survival by Design, are simple. They are stick figures, with thin arms wielded in 90-degree angles, for a hands-on-the-hips posture. The figures, mostly female, have the iconic triangular skirt that we have learned to associate with the woman’s restroom. Each of these figures has a perceptual crescent moon grin on their round faces and no nostrils or eyes.  

But what these figures lack in the eyes and noses, they make up for with attitude and sass. The cards say things that balance on the line between aloof irony and sincere sympathy: “Congratulations! I'd be happy for you if I wasn't so wrapped up in me right now.” Or for a marriage: “May your marriage exceed your expectations and your wedding gifts exceed the bar tab.” Or, for no particular reason: “Too big. Too small. Nobody likes the size of their boobies.” 

Slow summer start 

These cards were a product of a slow summer. After launching her freelance graphic design studio in 2008, Adler’s business began to lag. Though she knew that slowing demands from clientele was common in summer months, things grew restless. Out of this agitated boredom grew greeting card designs that could only emerge from silliness, sassiness, and lots of free time. 

The designs were the same stick figures that Adler had doodled in high school. Her first design was a colorful silhouette, next to the phrase, “I’m sorry. I’m an asshole. I didn’t mean it like that,” inspired Adler says, by her tendency to say hapless things that are inevitably misconstrued by friends.

Adler would send them to friends who miserably languished in office jobs, drawing each figure to her friend’s likeness, “to the extent stick figures allow.” Soon these friends, perhaps delighted with their own stick-figure images, were encouraging her to sell them. A RISD graduate in Advertising and Print Design, this would be Alder’s first actual product, but she created mockups, stacked them in a fuchsia plastic binder and marched up and down Westminster Street in Providence, pitching her cards to stores to much success.

Something with straightforward sass 

“When I first started writing and designing greeting cards three years ago, Hallmark was the standard. Cards were syrupy sweet and not particularly real,” says Adler. Her cards had characters of diverse colors, backgrounds, and “refreshingly straightforward.”  

While Adler was growing up, her mother had stressed the importance of thank you letters as well as getting someone a “perfect” birthday card. Her mother would tuck notes into elementary school lunch boxes as well as sending letters to college and summer camp. “I felt very special to have my little note and it made me appreciate the joy of knowing someone was thinking about me, even when we were apart,” says Adler.   

“I love the permanence of paper,” she says. Picking a card, writing a message, finding a stamp and a mailbox—it takes effort. “When you receive a card, you know that someone really must like you. I sort of joke, ‘Send someone a card. They'll think you care,’”—that’s Survival by Design’s cheeky tagline. “But I really mean it,” she says, smiling. 

Check out Adler’s designs at Survival by Design, and join her Kickstarter campaign here.

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