Will Memorial Cards Survive in the Age of Facebook?

memorial-cards-in-facebook-ageSeems like we print less in recent days and nearly every aspect of printing business gives way to new digital forms of storing and exchanging of information. Advertising goes digital, invoices go digital, cheques go out of use, business cards are replaced by the likes of LinkedIn.

Will memorial cards go digital as well? Modern world teaches us just to click and forget – about chores of our life and about people we love.

In our digitalised world there is a growing degree of appreciation for physical, printed materials. Good hotels are a perfect example with their well printed, expensive stationery. As physical print becomes scarce its value grows.

Memorial Cards seem to be going strong these days and there is no sign of them going anywhere anytime soon. It is enough to see how many companies offer them nowadays. Internet fuelled the abundance of choice, competition and increased quality of the designs.

Looks like while we are happy to go paperless with almost everything we used to print, memorial cards and indeed other traditional memorial products like acknowledgement cards and bookmarkers are still around.

The key here may be the word “traditional”. While our photo albums are now stored on our laptops and iPhones there are still things we do “the old way”. Or maybe the way they should be done.

Some of our own personalisable in memoriam card designs below…

If you are on Facebook you probably know this type user who cannot go through the day without posting images of their baby, some tasty food they cooked, new haircut and so on. Facebook certainly is a place to share joyful moments from your family’s life. But is it a place to share sadness and sorrow? Is it a place to remember somebody? Is it the right place to do so?

Places like Facebook force us to maintain the image of perfect, happy life. Yes, the times have changed and it is possible to create digital version of memorial card and share it on Facebook. How would others react? Would they click “like”? Would they write a couple of words in the comment? Would this Facebook memorial card look ok next to somebody’s cat and another Ice Bucket Challenge video?

These are questions that are hard to answer. Traditional ways of remembering people we love are safe and nobody will question them. The formal way of doing things gives us guarantee it is done right.

Creation of a printed memorial card takes time. It also costs money. You have to find and select photos, verses, sometimes visit printers or spend time online browsing designs and ordering cards.

The effects are not instantaneous. Somebody has to create and print the design – easy to say but in reality it is a long, complicated and mostly manual process. Then you have to wait for you cards to arrive or collect them from the printers. Then you have to select people who are to get the cards, put addresses on envelopes and post the cards out – or hand them out by yourself. All this requires time and effort.

Many predicted the end of print even at the very beginning of the Internet era. This vision still may materialise but even when it does, memorial prints are likely to be the last to go. Prints used in advertising like leaflets or posters are driven by the need to make money. Memorial prints are driven by what we feel. They are not here to make money, but memories.

I do not think Facebook or Internet are a threat to memorial cards in the physical printed form we know. Preparing, making and distributing them is a social event that social media would struggle to replicate. Certainly, there will be people who will just click and forget. Many more though will choose to put their time in, print and remember instead.

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