24-25.qxp_Layout 1 01/04/2022 11:04 Page 2
cardsharp
Forever
Friends Cardsharp was saddened to learn of the death of Deborah Jones, the artist and creator behind Dino and Forever Friends. She died at the tragically young age of 62 after fighting pancreatic cancer for two years. Cardsharp pays tribute to her life and legacy. Cardsharp was shocked by the terrible news that Deborah Jones was only 62 years old when she passed away, but it made him reflect on what an impact this young woman has had on the greeting card industry. Cardsharp can’t quite believe that Dino, the range that changed the face of humorous greeting cards for ever, is over 40 years old and those Forever Friends’ bears are over 35 years old. The modern, iconoclastic and quirky Dino, the name Deborah originally designed under, was the top seller in WHSmith, at the time the leading greeting card retailer, when she was barely out of college. Deborah created Forever Friends, that at its peak was a £300 million global brand phenomenon, when astonishingly she was still in her twenties. Deborah first met the then young publisher and former wholesaler Andrew Brownsword in 1980 above a fish and chip shop in Reading where she was living at the time. Andrew could see the young student had an incredible and unique talent and even before seeing the results at retail invested heavily in Dino humour. But it was a few years later in 1987 that Deborah hit the stellar heights and came up with the two lovable bears that would
24
PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
Above: Forever Friends, created by Deborah Jones has to rank as one of the best selling card brands of all time. Left: Deborah Jones’ shy persona belied her exuberant creative drive. Far left: When Forever Friends was celebrating its 10th anniversary it had won the hearts of millions. Below: Cardsharp ‘bearing up’!
become Forever Friends. They were inspired by Alloysius, the teddy bear carried around by Sebastian Flyte, the debauched character in Evelyn Waugh’s novel, Brideshead Revisited. In no time at all Forever Friends became the fastest selling greeting card range of all time, capturing the public’s imagination to such a degree that the cards would sell out as soon as they hit the racks. It was hard to define the brand’s success. The bears had no names. They were strangely sexless, almost androgynous, only differentiated by the odd ribbon. They were neither young nor old. They did not seem to have a huge personality. Yes,
they were cute, but so were many other greeting card animal characters, that had become before. But boy how they appealed to young and old alike. Perhaps Cardsharp wonders, if it was their very absence of identity and personality that made the Forever Friends bears so appealing. The giver and receiver could almost inject their own thoughts and feelings into those round ursine characters. Without wishing to sound too pretentious (moi!!) the bears could be compared to De Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Their smiles were so enigmatic that you could put your own interpretation into what they were thinking. Deborah by nature was a very shy and private person, in contrast to her partner in the success, Andrew