Inside greeting: BRAVO!
Fact (little known): In 1984, while living on Lincoln Place in Brooklyn’s Park Slope section, I had a brief, eventful (if not fruitful) foray into the world of greeting cards by designing, illustrating and producing a line called KISS ME ~ I’M A FROG. And off I went, taking A• Jones Designs headlong into an industry ruled by well-established giants. Forget that I knew zero about the social stationery industry (including that it was called this) or had a business plan, or a clue about preparing my darling original Dr. Ph. Martin’s watercolor dye illustrations for printing, or how to even FIND the right printer, or any of a squillion other things I should have known before renting a booth at National Stationery Convention held at Javits Center, NYC.
That was thirty-five years ago so most details are long gone, but I do remember Convention Day One: fatigue crawled up and down my spine in a way I’d never known; sounds wafted in and out, faint and more faint. After the months of hard work it took to get there, I felt utterly alone in a sea where Hallmark, American Greetings and Papyrus were anchor ships. But I wasn’t alone—I had Vitterman, Raz, C.J. Rex and Bloom and our booth looked pretty good! Brand new fire-engine red metal folding chairs, framed poster-sized prints of my frog cast hung from the pipe and drape. I focused on all the wrong details. For example, since I was working as his showroom model, I had pencils made by the same company that did Calvin Klein’s pencils (skinny, black, chic pencil with white type) and I had a cool display for my “deck” of KISS ME—I’M A FROG cards. All twelve of them. And that was my first lesson learned: a deck of twelve cards is a complete joke. If a buyer only liked half my line, which is not unusual, you can see the problem.
Buyers sauntered in and out, mostly to munch on candy and rest their weary feet. I took a few orders and there was no shortage of advice and commentary: learned that my frogs have “bedroom eyes” (not a good thing) and were “forced cute” like Disney characters (also not good, and yet we all know how that whole thing has worked out for Walt et al). A shop in NYC’s theatre district LOVED my Happy Opening Night and Brava/Bravo cards. Most frustrating lesson was: before the ink was dry on an order buyers wanted to know “what do you have that’s new?” In the end, I had a LOT of very heavy inventory that I couldn’t move: except in a 25 ft Ryder truck when my (now) husband, Rob, and I drove across county from Brooklyn to San Francisco the following year, 1985.
It wasn’t until a few years ago that I finally let go and reduced my aging stock to a few shoe boxes and donated the rest to SCRAP (Scroungers Center for Reusable Art Parts) in San Francisco. Ah-ha!! Maybe THAT’S where you remember seeing these colorful frogs!
To end, I’ll go back to the beginning and tell you where this crazy frog card idea originated. In 1979 I moved from Atlanta, GA to Manhattan for a different foray: into the fashion industry as a runway model. I was sharing an upper west side apartment, sleeping on a mattress on the floor when one morning early this silly poem pushed me out of bed:
If I were a frog
a sittin’ on a log
would you kiss me and hence
turn me into your prince
of love?
I have no idea why I thought Pay attention! This is sparking a great business venture,” (another example of my artist mind working hard but not smart) but I started making handmade greeting cards, selling them to model friends and around the CK showroom. From there my frog prince and I leapt into business.Needless to say I lost money on this venture, but what I gained much in other ways: my late mother, Ms. Irene, kept those twelve designs in constant circulation, sending everybody we knew cards every birthday for many years. My frogs have made a lot of people smile over the years, and continue to as I’ve put them back in circulation for special occasions, since inventory is limited.
Of course, now you want to see the other eleven designs. Sorry. Won’t be happening here—not ready to have my amphibian cast enter this online digital galaxy. Digging into the archives to write this has been fun, and to those buyers who asked what’s new I say: My daughter and her millennial friends think my 35-year old deck of frogs is fresh and new—so there’s that!