The Future of Stationery

The way the economy is shuffling priorities these days is prompting consumers to step back and re-evaluate what they spend their money on and Stationery has taken a hard hit at the register. Many reports indicate that stationery purchases have gone down and photo cards from shutterfly.com, sendoutcards.com and other online “do it yourself” creators are high on the holiday card list. The downside to these cards is they aren’t seen as “quality” cards and have been referred to as flimsy and poorly printed.

Hallmark stats show that boxed cards are still selling well around the holidays but it’s not your imagination that fewer store bought holiday cards are making it to the mailboxes.
The fact is that cards are priced higher and the increased price for stamps (to be raised to .44 cents this May ’09) is killing any plans for the future of store bought stationery.

I’m not a pessimist in any sense of the word but reality is setting in that a new era for stationery is before our eyes and the internet has taken over! How will designers face this situation? Will print technology cease to exist in the next 10 years? Will the coldness of the web be the only thing the next generation experiences? And will the warmth of humanity as we understand it disappear and leave a robotic foot print on hearts? I’ll be looking up to the “Big” Stationery guys to direct me in how to go with the flow of the down turn of the stationery industry.