Interview With Mango Salute

Want to personalise your greeting cards without spending a small fortune? Mango Salute has completely changed the game by supporting up-and-coming artists and providing high-quality greeting cards and stationary for all occasions. SHESAID chatted with Shoshana Jones-Resnik about starting the company with her brother and found out what’s next for the brand in 2015.

Tell us how Mango Salute first started?

Mango Salute started almost as a game. Ariel (my brother) was always travelling and we moved around a bit. We noticed that our friends and family in the places we left felt a little neglected and as our friends started to spend more time on devices they all seemed to get lonelier.

We also noticed that the reason we had such great relationships was due to an emphasis my parents paid to written communication. Whenever we went to camp, my parents would send us letters for every day we were away – and my sister’s often got in on the action by sending riddles and drawings and other activities. Written apologies and thank you notes were also common in our house and of course, books were everywhere.

People don’t need much to feel happy and loved. Beautiful written communication made a big difference to anyone we sent cards to, so Mango Salute was our way of making this accessible to everybody.

What are some of your favourite card designs to date?

Card design choices are entirely subjective. I am a very intense, rather grounded person, with a twisted sense of humor. Which gives me a bias towards deep colours and strong lines which you will see in my three favourite designs (ok four – it was so hard to pick).

Golden Hair by Jesse Treece – well really anything by Jesse! He is one of those artists who just has a great sense of humour and I love his style. I sent this to a friend as an AMAZING JOB / CONGRATULATIONS CARD. I can tell you she had worked insanely hard and had amazing results. So this was the perfect representational piece for her at that moment.

Okay, I am a bit cheeky for this one – Full Moon by Ish Gordon. I like to use this as my default encouragement card. No, ladies and gents, it isn’t over till the fat lady sings!

You have got to laugh at the Irony! King by Randi Antonsen is a mixed media piece perfect for those times your friend thinks he is king of the hill, but then realises he was just following a path laid out for him. My sister’s husband got a good chuckle from this one:

This is for all my friends in the mad house! Whatever stage of crazy my friends are currently experiencing – this card seems to be multipurpose for almost any situation.

Can anyone contribute their designs to Mango Salute?

We have an open door policy for artists submissions, which means artists can come from all walks of life and come from over 30 different countries.

Whilst the submission process is open, we have quality control in place through our art directors. Our art directors carefully select only the best quality images (because we want you to have premium quality greeting cards) and double check content to ensure it matches with our values.

Where can our readers purchase some of the cards?

Wherever you are in the world, we will print and send them to you via your closest printer. All of our fine art cards can be purchased on www.mangosalute.com

Can you share what’s next for Mango Salute in 2015?

Mango Salute is in for an exciting few months. We have just launched our YouTube channel and are expanding our range of cards significantly. The Youtube channel is instructional – it gives best practices, step-by-step and various insights so that everybody can create great quality communication pieces. It also looks at how communication can enhance your relationships both socially and commercially.

Whilst the Youtube channel builds your know how, we are working hard to ensure that our art range is growing to meet more individual’s needs. We are focusing on growing the artwork to be more diverse culturally. From Muslim to indigenous artwork we know each culture has its own ways of telling stories through art, and we would like to embrace them all.

I can’t tell you more than that at present, but there are a number of great things coming up – so keep your eyes peeled!