Welcome To The 'Upside Down' World Of Foggish

What attracted you to work at scribbler?

Growing up I've always found it difficult to express my emotions especially on occasions like birthdays and Mother's Day etc. always finding greeting cards too smooshy or just plain not true. Scribbler is the first shop I ever walked into and thought thank fuck, finally some decent cards. The first card I ever bought and genuinely enjoyed was on Father's Day, my parents were mid divorce and I found a card that said 'dad ignore what mum says, I think you're alright' and I can remember laughing in the shop and thinking about his reaction to something that was funny in an honest not overly sentimental kinda way. From then on every time I needed a card that's where I went to first. When I started designing greeting cards I'd be lying if I said scribbler wasn't first on my mind.

When you send a card what do you write?

Whenever a card floats around the office I feel an immediate sense of dread to write something cool and original. What actually happens is that I end up wishing 'good luck' to the mum to be and 'farewell, won't be the same without you' to the birthday boy. It's shameful really.

Worst card you've ever made?

It feels like 2/3 of my cards initially start out as the worst card I ever made. If I had to pick one to sit on the shelf of shame, it would probably be one of a naked Santa (except for white socks) quite graphically jizzing out snowflakes and the tag line 'Christmas is coming'....yeah, I judge myself too; def shelf of shame material.

What's my biggest regret?

Well this escalated quickly. Erm in all honesty I've tried to lead a life filled with as little regret as possible, there's an insta worthy board in the hallway entrance of my flat that says 'fuck normal, fortune favours the brave'. Admittedly this kind of thinking has lead me to being single af, financially unstable and in far too many drunken fail videos than I'd like but hey at least it's all material, right? 😬 That being said when I was about 14/15 I made the never to be repeated mistake of going against the instructions on the back of a tube of hair removal cream, and applied it to the one area it told me not to...HOLY. FUCKING. FUCK. I can still vividly remember my mum banging on the bathroom door for the toilet, blissfully oblivious to the hellish trauma of me squatting in the bath tub frantically trying to put out the forest fire of a 1000 suns that was ravaging and peeling the flesh from my nether regions. I've broken bones and still not felt pain like that. I'm convinced that 'FML' came from someone going through a similar experience. I've got ptsd just thinking about it. *shudders* Nope.

How do you come up with your card ranges?

Most start with an occasion like Valentine's Day and I think about the kind of card I would give and it goes from there. The rest of the time it's inspired by events in mine or my friends life, and of course binge watching tv.

Favourite season to make cards?

Winter 100%. The weather is dire and I find myself looking for reasons not to leave the house which means I have more focus. Or at least as much focus as you can in pyjamas with a fully stocked mulled wine cupboard.

How do you promote yourself on Social Media?

I'm not massively into social media but I've come to fully appreciate Instagram as a place where you can connect and interact with other like-minded folk from locations all over the world. There are trolls like anywhere else but I've generally found it to be a friendly place and have actually made friends through there. I often put cards up there first for feedback before I sell them and sometimes I'll throw out questions about what to design next. I'm also on Facebook and Twitter but I'm just not a fan of them and it's evident by the lack of work there. I should probably delete them and just keep to Instagram.

What designs are you most proud of and why?

I guess at the moment my favourites are the stranger things ones, because I absolutely love a mash up and I've not seen any other cards like it. Otherwise it would be some of the Valentine's Day cards. I'm not much into PDA's and so I think I apply this to cards, I can feel myself cringe when I see the front of cards filled with declarations of love and just smoosh. So I find Valentine's Day particularly fun to design cards for, it needs to be fun and light-hearted but at the same time needs to convey love without making me want to throw up.

What is unique about your designs?

I think it's a toss-up between the humour and the bright colours. I try really hard to make sure that the cards I design aren't rip offs of other cards and I'm proud of that. Sometimes with pop culture cards this can be particularly difficult, you can work on a card be really proud of it and then find one almost identical to it the next day, it sucks but it happens.

Shop original designs from Foggish right here!