The Card Curative was a side hustle project that I co-founded with my husband. We tinkered with it as a creative outlet for a couple of years, and have since ceased operations. The site is still viewable here.
With our collective backgrounds in design, e-commerce, and marketing, the idea for The Card Curative came to us one day after a frustrating trip to a big-box retailer for Mother's Day cards. With all of the beautiful stationery brands in the world today, why did purchasing greeting cards sometimes feel like such a hassle? Why was it so difficult to remember to buy a card with enough time to mail it in advance of someone's birthday? What if there was a service that did all of the remembering and the shopping for you? Thus, The Card Curative was born.
What was The Card Curative?
The Card Curative was a greeting card delivery service that is tailored specifically for the customer. In the increasingly digital world, there is something extra special about receiving a handwritten card. But remembering the occasion and making that extra trip to the store can make buying cards a hassle. We were there to solve that problem. By partnering with our network of independent designers and letterpresses, we ensured that the customer always had the perfect card, exactly when they needed to send it.
The site is still viewable here: www.thecardcurative.com.
E-Commerce
Starting with very rudimentary coding skills, I built our e-commerce site on Squarespace as our web platform. Going into this, I knew basic html coding, and utilized the resources and time I had available to teach myself how to manipulate our basic site design to create a more customized look. There were many challenges that arose during the process of creating the site, and that was one of the most exciting parts of the project- figuring out a process and how to execute it.
Social Media & Photography
I handled all flatlay photography and editing for our social media accounts. We relied mostly on free social media to try to reach our core consumer, utilizing relevant, topical hashtags and enticing photography to engage our audience. Instagram was the main channel we focused on, and I used Planoly to help schedule out our social posts. For what little paid social we tried, we found it was a challenge to explain our service through a quick advertisement.
Our instagram can be found here: https://www.instagram.com/thecardcurative/
Branding
After identifying our brand champion and target audience, we set out to create the brand identity. We worked together to create the mood board, logo concept, and typography style for The Card Curative. Using Illustrator and Photoshop, I created the assets for the site and designed the logo.
