So, what is a jigsaw puzzle greeting card anyway?
Like anything that delivers a greeting, a key element of Jigsaiz jigsaws is surprise. That might seem odd, given that the usual method with a jigsaw involves microscopic scrutiny of a box top or insert for as many hours/days/weeks (delete as applicable) it takes to complete it. Our jigsaws are different. There is no picture on the box. That’s right. No picture. That would spoil the surprise. Here’s our box – not a picture in sight.
The idea is that the greeting or message is revealed as recipient builds their puzzle. They receive a mysterious box from a friend or loved one, open it, tip out the pieces, find a little card explaining that someone has sent them a message in a puzzle, and then begin to build it. A short while later, they complete the jigsaw. Hey presto, they discover what their “jig says”, hence our brand name “Jigsaiz”.
What guided us in the design process?
The expectation that a recipient would complete the jigsaw without a picture in order to maintain the element of surprise was the main driver in our design process. We identified a number of key considerations:
The puzzle can’t be too big.
We settled on the size of a typical Hallmark greeting card which is 133mm x 183mm or a bit less than 5 x 7 inches for those of us who’ve never quite got to grips with this new-fangled metric nonsense. We tried many configurations and settled on 5 pieces across by 7 down (or the other way round), with 35 in total. That seemed like a good compromise between size, stability and time of completion. The pieces also fit into that dinky 100mm square recycled cardboard box which can be mailed as a large letter, thus reducing costs for our customers.
The puzzle needs to be well made, robust and fit together snugly.
This was the area that caused us the most angst during the development process. We harboured the delusion that a Cricut cutting machine would be able to cut a suitably thick sandwich of photo paper and jigsaw board, to produce good pieces. Nope, not even close. The jigsaws we produced using that method were flimsy, and poor quality.
We were still committed to our idea of making greeting jigsaws, though, so we had to find a better way. After a lot of research, we discovered that what we needed was a proper industrial die-cutting press, together with a forme. We found the very die cutter in the EU – thankfully pre-Brexit! We also had a forme custom made for us by the company that makes them for some of the leading mass market jigsaw producers. Result! Now we could produce great quality, interestingly shaped and robust puzzle pieces. (Never ones to throw things out, the Cricut was repurposed to make our Christmas decorations!)
The puzzle must have lots of clues.
In the early stages, we tried a lot of ways to introduce clues into our puzzle designs to make them (relatively) easy for non-jigsaw addicts (of which I understand there are some!) to complete in a reasonable time. After all, you don’t want to be waiting for days (or even hours) to reveal your greeting. We identified a number of key principles which have guided our personalised jigsaw collections:
(In the images below, I’ve used the original design files rather than the finished jigsaws – it’s easier to see what’s going on.)
More than a little white space is a no-no.
Lots of really attractive modern greeting cards are as much as 80% white space – this just doesn’t work for a greeting jigsaw puzzle. Completing a 35 piece puzzle with maybe 30 white pieces isn’t going to be a good experience for most people (although there may be exceptions)!
Background text is a great clue for orientation.
Virtually all of our puzzles have faint text running all the way through the background – not so bold as to detract from the message, but bold enough to read, and provide a clear clue to which way is up. The text is always relevant to the greeting, so, for example, an Anniversary jigsaw will have Happy Anniversary-related words in the background.
Small, theme-matched graphic elements can aid completion. For example, on a Valentine’s Day puzzle (like the example above), we might use scattered hearts, while on a Christmas puzzle, we might use snowflakes. We even invented a name for these little images. One day in the studio we discovered that we were both referring to them as “dotabouts” and it stuck (in the way these things do). So, dotabouts they are.
Big and bold is best for the central message. Sorry to harp on about greeting cards, but many modern cards have a message written in 10, or 12 point text. Chances are, if you put this on a jigsaw, it would fall across the intersection of 4 pieces and end up being almost unreadable. We generally use a text size north of 50 points because the message is absolutely critical. If the recipient can’t make out whether the puzzle is wishing them “Happy Birthday” or posing the question “Will You Marry Me”, we’ve not done our job!
Having a good mix of fun and traditional designs means there’s something for everyone. Most of the early prototype designs we produced were either cute or wacky (and sometimes both). These have a place, but we quickly realised that many of our potential customers were looking for something more traditional. In these cases, the quirkiness comes from the fact of the Jigsaiz jigsaw puzzle itself, and the fact that it’s a very unusual way to receive a greeting. Cue our best-selling puzzle of all time (in its various guises) …
Feedback from customers
The feedback from our customers has been really positive. We’ve had puzzles completed by six year olds, teenagers, and adults of all ages. We’ve also had puzzles completed by older people with cognitive difficulties who’d never be able to complete even a large piece traditional puzzle.
One of the key messages we get time and time again is about the joy and surprise of realising that you’ve built your own “Good Luck” or “Happy Retirement” greeting in a jigsaw puzzle! That moment of surprise is why we do what we do, and we love it!
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