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The Card Designer Highlight is a sequence that includes impartial makers whose greeting playing cards you could find in Paper Supply shops. Meet and be impressed by a brand new designer each month on our weblog!
Meet Marie Castiglione, the designer and proprietor of Spaghetti & Meatballs LLC, identified for cooking up witty and splendidly humorous playing cards, even in heartbreak. Discover out about how her arduous work, fast pondering, and card-making pastime changed into a profession, right here.
How did you start your card-making profession?
I really began my card-making profession after I was an artwork director at Bloomingdale’s in New York Metropolis! I labored within the promoting and style division for 10 years designing journal advertisements comparable to Vogue, Harper’s Weird and Elle in addition to all of the outside media in NYC. Have you ever ever seen an advert on high of a taxi or bus cease? That was me! I did this job for 10 years and cherished it. However whereas I used to be there, I turned the go to individual within the workplace to make a boss or co-worker a birthday card! One way or the other the phrase bought out that I used to be artful and fast! So if it was somebody’s birthday, they’d job me with a “pressing matter” and ask me to whip up a card for them, have the entire advertising and marketing division signal it and throw a final minute shock celebration within the convention room for them at 1pm! I began to fall in love with it. I cherished rapidly arising with a theme, witty copy line and stunning them with a card that pulled straight from their persona! I cherished seeing folks’s faces gentle up figuring out that card was utterly impressed by them. They weren’t simply playing cards you’d throw away both. Folks used to point out me years later how they’d hold these playing cards tucked away of their workplace drawers as a result of it was a snapshot of an period: previous coworkers signing it, wishing them effectively, it was like an previous yearbook!
In 2017, I began my first Etsy Store with 6 designs. I rapidly uploaded 6 playing cards within the store so I might apply to a cool craft truthful coming to Brooklyn referred to as Renegade and shockingly I bought in. This was my first actual deadline. For years, I had been making playing cards and giving them away to coworkers or relations! This was the primary time I needed to sit down and design a line of playing cards that weren’t catered to a specific individual however can be generic sufficient to promote, but confirmed my persona and humor. I had 6 weeks to make a line of playing cards and put together for this craft present. In the meantime it was my busiest season at Bloomingdale’s, and I used to be at a 2 week photoshoot on a regular basis capturing movie for our largest Fall marketing campaign. However after I was on set, I’d consider copy traces and pictures to pair it with, jot it down on a serviette or pocket book and after the shoot day was over, take a taxi again to my work workplace on 53rd and third Ave and design playing cards til midnight or 1am. Then be again on the photoshoot the following morning by 9am and do it yet again. I did this for weeks and was a zombie. However I used to be so impressed to place out my first line of playing cards and exhibit at my very first flea market in Brooklyn. Ultimately, I designed a line of 75 playing cards J
After that first present in Brooklyn, I continuously saved including and subtracting to my line. I used to be continuously placing myself on the market and doing craft reveals throughout New York Metropolis on the weekends. Artist and Fleas in Brooklyn, Phoenicia Flea in Williamsburg, Queens Craft Brigade in Astoria, so many!! Some reveals have been profitable and a few have been flops. Some reveals I made cash, and a few I spent extra in taxis and ubers to get there then I did on the present lol. However it was all a part of the method. You may’t take a look at one present and hyper focus in your efficiency on the present. You need to hold placing your self on the market, and making an attempt totally different recipes to see what works for you. It’s an extended sport. For me, I met a extremely cool stylish named Kate from Fast Brown Fox at a flea market in Brooklyn. She was sort sufficient to inform me concerning the paper business and helped me begin enthusiastic about my pastime as a profession and he or she was the primary one to inform me concerning the Nationwide Stationery Present on the Javit’s Heart. And that was the present that was the sport changer for me and my enterprise. It took my enterprise from a pastime to a profession!
The place do you draw inspiration from? Meals? Pop Tradition? Timeless Motifs? Playful Puns?
I draw inspiration from all kinds of various issues. I’m a giant feeler! I really feel issues deeply, as many artists doJ It’s our specialty. So I pull from actual life occasions on a regular basis. My specialty is heartbreak! I like having the ability to discover humor in the whole lot. Typically I consider myself because the Taylor Swift of stationery- nobody is
off limits! Yearly, I get my sister and girlfriends in a single room with limitless wine and booze to brainstorm concepts. We discuss dangerous dates, good dates, and the whole lot in between! The icks of courting! Issues solely girlfriends discuss at late-night sleepovers. I’m additionally impressed by hip-hop music, early 00s nostalgia, minimal design, and Drake lol.
What does your day seem like as a card maker and designer?
All my days are totally different, however usually I begin my days off with catching up on emails. Sipping on my Starbies! As soon as I put in somewhat laptop work and ensure all my jobs are operating easily, I’m all the time out and about doing various things. Typically I’m pulling orders in my studio, generally I’m operating to my native printer to choose up some playing cards, generally I’m assembly with a possible consumer to do a collab, generally I’m in Residence Depot selecting out paint colours to design my subsequent tradeshow sales space, generally I’m at my accountant’s workplace going over numbers. It all the time relies upon! However that’s actually what I like about working for myself, day-after-day is totally different. I’m not glued to my laptop display screen for 10 hours a day like I used to be at my company job. I choose and select my very own hours. If I really feel like taking a random Wednesday off as a result of I want a psychological break I can. If I select to sleep in and press snooze I can. If I resolve to go to completely happy hour at 4pm, I can. However with all that freedom does come a whole lot of self-discipline. I normally work 7 days per week, even when it’s only a few hours every day. I do a whole lot of make amends for Saturdays and Sundays when my electronic mail is quiet. I work a whole lot of late nights after I’m preparing for a launch. And so typically it’s arduous to carve out “actual” trip time. However both means, I’d studying to steadiness work and life alittle extra day-to-day and I all the time knew I used to be minimize out for working for myself someday.
What’s your most well-liked medium?
I’m a graphic designer by commerce, so my quick reply can be that! I additionally am a freehand artist so I can draw and paint, so a whole lot of my concepts will begin with a really fast sketch in my pocket book however I then instantly go into InDesign an Illustrator. I labored in these applications on a regular basis at Bloomingdale’s so it’s second nature for me. I can draw or sketch something on the pc in a couple of minutes. In my off time, I do love oil portray. Once I was youthful, my sister and I’d take non-public artwork lessons after college studying learn how to oil paint. I nonetheless have a few of these canvases in my house. However now as an grownup who’s all the time making and creating, it’s undoubtedly arduous for me to search out the time to attract and paint anymore!
What does your inventive course of seem like?
By no means linear, all the time natural! Normally begins off with a enjoyable temper board. Chopping out photos, patterns and magazines to create a vibe. Narrowing a shade palette down for the season. Brainstorming with my sister and girlfriends for concepts/themes. As soon as our concepts are considerably outlined, I’ll do some fast freehand sketches of how I see the playing cards trying. I’m fortunate sufficient to have some wonderful feminine illustrators who work for me now. I hand off a whole lot of my concepts over to them and they’re able to convey to life my imaginative and prescient with their immense pure expertise. I’ll textual content my sister for some copy concepts. She’s a phrase genius and she will spit hearth again to me 1, 2, 3 concepts in seconds. I take the picture and the phrases and mess around for days till I really feel like one thing is admittedly full. I sit on issues and let it simmer. I’ll textual content choices over to my bestie group chat and ask them continuously at midnight, “Which one do you want higher?” lol they put up with me. It’s actually a nonlinear technique to work, however that’s how I’ve all the time been. I like to attract exterior the traces J
What are you most pleased with as a creator and card maker?
It’s arduous to nail only one singular accomplishment. However after I take into consideration this query, one factor that comes proper to thoughts is that I used to be courageous sufficient to step away from a ten 12 months at director place within the style business and create the life and profession path that I did for myself with no guide. It was trial and error. Networking to see how different folks we in a position to make it work. I walked away from the whole lot I labored for: my artwork director title, my single woman house, all of the issues in NY that made me who I used to be on the time. I lived there for just below 15 years. That’s the place I spent the vast majority of my grownup life on the time: school plus 10 years of company life. I stop my job in 2019 and moved again to my small hometown exterior of Buffalo NY and moved in with my dad and mom for two years whereas I bought my toes up on the bottom! It was very scary and arduous for me to go let go of these issues at the moment. Plus bunking in with the ‘rents!!! However I knew I wanted to be dwelling to take this to the following degree, focus on my well being and be surrounded by household.
Outdoors of that, I’m very pleased with my relationship with a few of my large nationwide chains! I’ve been working with HomeGoods, TJ Maxx and Marshalls persistently for about 4 years now. In addition to the Canadian shops HomeSense, Winners and Marshalls and throughout the pond in London, they’ve a department referred to as TK Maxx. They’ve been so good to me and persistently shopping for my merchandise for each vacation: Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mom’s Day, Father’s Day and many others. So that actually is a dream come true.
And a brand new challenge I’m very pleased with that has been 2 years within the works and I can lastly let the cat out of the bag is a collaboration with American Greetings and TARGET launching in January 2024! Keep tuned…
Any private tidbits? Particular skills/enjoyable info?
I really can’t prepare dinner Spaghetti & Meatballs lol
“A woman within the streets, a freak in Adobe lol”
Discover Spaghetti & Meatballs playing cards comparable to Resting Grinch Face Vacation Card, New 12 months Who Dis Card, and HoHoHo Vacation Card Set at your native retailer or on-line at papersource.com. For extra inspiration and behind-the-scenes motion, observe @_spaghettimeatballs_ on IG.
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