Designing Funny Greeting Cards

When you get your custom greeting cards done, you can design it any variety of ways. You can choose to outfit it with photos, original art or just lace it with your own brand of humor.

Humorous greeting cards are popular for a reason - they're extremely memorable, apart from providing that gift of laughter. If you feel that a funny greeting card will work best for the people you're planning to send them to and the occasion they're celebrating, here's a brief guide on how to write with humorous sentiments.

First, the things to avoid. While toilet humor can be funny at the right time, greeting cards aren't their venue. Avoid racist, sexist and similarly offensive jokes, regardless of how funny they may seem.

Second, there are a few basic techniques good greeting card writers employ when crafting those funny lines. Most humorous greeting cards employ one or a combination of these techniques.

Bait & Switch. With this technique, the card starts out simple enough with the typical greetings on the cover. Inside the fold, however, you deliver a strong punch line.

Examples

BAIT: Happy 25th Birthday
SWITCH: I'm sorry, this card was printed several decades ago.

BAIT: Happy Graduation
SWITCH: Now get a job and pay me back for all that money I loaned you.

Gentle Insults. You can just call them "insults" but I wanted to highlight the word gentle. You want the receiving party to laugh, after all, not cry in shame. This one should be a little more forthright in its intentions - looking at the cover alone, you know there must be a punch line inside. Sometimes, there doesn't even need to be anything inside as the whole humorous sentiment is written on the outer fold.

Examples

COVER : A Good Case Can Be Made For Enjoying Christmas
INSIDE : In Fact, You'll Probably Have Two Cases You Fat Alcoholic. Merry Christmas!


Visual Gags. Usually a variation of either the bait and switch or gentle insults, visual gags add pictures to drive the humor in. It's the most popular variation of funny greeting cards as its the type you usually see across racks.

Examples

PICTURE: Two Old Men In A Calgary Club
CAPTION: Your Male Strippers Are Here
INSIDE: Happy Birthday!