About

Most greeting cards are aimed at nobody. Someone you know has just been made redundant, or divorced, or has finally got the last kid out of the house — and the aisle offers you a watercolour of a bird and the words “thinking of you at this difficult time.”

Nobody talks like that. Nobody has ever talked like that.

Blunt Trauma makes cards for the things that actually happen, written the way people actually talk about them. Usually that means honest. Often it means rude. Occasionally it means don’t let your nan see it.

There is one rule

The joke goes at the situation, never at the person holding the card. Getting divorced is funny. The person getting divorced is not. Redundancy is funny; being frightened about the rent is not. If a line can’t tell the difference, it doesn’t get printed — and plenty haven’t been.

That’s also why every card page says who it’s for and who it isn’t. Some of these are the wrong card for someone having a genuinely bad time, and it’s better to say so than to sell one anyway.

How it works

Every card is blank inside, so whatever you want to say is yours to write. Both printed lines are on the front. Cards are 113 × 156mm, printed to order and posted in the UK, and delivery is free with no minimum — the postage is already in the price rather than bolted on at the end.

It’s one person, a lot of arguing over individual words, and a printer.