The Stationers Guild

I have been closely following the evolution of digital photography and its impact on the holiday photo card industry.  For the most part, I have been quite disappointed with the poor resolution of digital images, particularly those that are mass-produced by commercial printers.   Furthermore, the holiday designs and motifs that often frame the holiday photograph are generally quite pedestrian.  The end result is a holiday photo card that often resembles a business flyer that does little justice to your family photograph.

At this year’s National Stationery Show, I had the opportunity to chat with David Evans of William Arthur, a leading designer of holiday photo cards.  David explained that William Arthur planned to extend the options available to its loyal clients by offering the same classy designs regardless of whether one uses photo mounts or digital imprinting.  As the image below suggests, William Arthur has been remarkably successful in maintaining their traditional high design standards while providing their clients with an exciting new array of printing options.

Digital Holiday Photo Card and Card with Photo Mounts

William Arthur’s Holiday 2009 photo album is broken down into three broad sections:  Digital, Transitional and Traditional.  Sample designs in the Traditional section use photo mount adhesives to mount a 4″x 6″ photograph directly on the card stock.  Clients can choose from a variety of holiday greetings and personalize the photo card with their family names. 

Sample photo cards from the Transitional Section can be printed digitally or with photo adhesives to mount your photographs directly on the personalized greeting card.  William Arthur has done a remarkable job maintaining the elegance of the photo frame to showcase your photograph regardless of which printing method you select.  From a casual glance, it is often difficult to determine whether you are looking at a digital image or the actual photograph.  Clearly, William Arthur has invested a considerable amount of time and energy to maintain this high standard of excellence.

William Arthur Digital Holiday Photo Card

While William Arthur makes it rather easy to work with both printing options, digital printing is far more complex.  Specifically, most digital photographs need to be cropped and often need some minor editing (i.e. “red eye”).  Furthermore, since you are printing digitally, you are no longer restricted to a limited number of ink colors.  While the end result may be easier since you don’t need to mount the photos on the greeting card, the design options require careful consideration and a not insignifcant investment of your time.

William Arthur holiday photo cards are definitely worth a look if you value excellence in design and execution.  We strongly encourage you to visit a qualified stationer in your neighborhood who can walk you many design options available from William Arthur’s delightful 2009 holiday photo album.

Richard W. May
Founding Member Stationers Guild

The primary advantage of digital printing is the fact that you can imprint your photo directly on the holiday card.  This saves you the time of applying photos to the adhesive strips on the photo card or inserting the photos into tight slots.   With quality 4″x 6″ prints readily available at less than $0.20, it is difficult to construct a case that digital printing is less expensive than conventional photographs.  Applying consistent standards of paper weight, paper quality and equivalent printing and design standards, we can find no significant price advantage for digital imprinting over conventional photo cards.

Image resolution has always been the key factor in choosing between digital and conventional printing. In numerous side-by-side comparisons, I still maintain that a family photograph mounted on a framed holiday card is still the best way to showcase your family during the holiday season. That being said, digital printing now provides you with the opportunity to create custom photo cards that elegantly integrate the photograph(s) and supporting designs into elegant works of art.

Found below are two samples of William Photo Cards. The first image, “Christmas 2008”, depicts a 4”x 6” photo card that was applied to the card using adhesive strips.

William Arthur Photo Card

The second image (shown below) is a reproduction of a digital photo card that makes use of two of the eight William Arthur custom colors to create a distinctive holiday card.

William_Arthur_Digital_Photo_Card

Both images were scanned at a resolution of 300 dpi and then converted into gif images for the web.  While both images are considerably sharper to the naked eye, the different printing process highlights several important differences.   First, digital photo cards tend to have more of a matte finish and appear softer, even pastel-like.  Second, glossy photographs rich in color tend to work best with bold colored borders.  Third, there is no way to digitally reproduce the stunning engraved or letterpress borders that frame your photograph using photographs.  Finally, as with any digital printing process, you generally have more flexibility in determining the layout of your photo card and customization of your holiday greeting. 

Low quality internet resolutions do not do justice to William Arthur’s beautiful designs. I strongly suggest that you contact a Guild Member store in your neighborhood to see whether William Arthur’s new digital printing technology is right for you.

Richard May

Founding Guild Member