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KOCO cards: Art greets poetry

April 19, 2000
Web posted at: 12:09 p.m. EDT (1609 GMT)

NEW YORK (CNN) -- For more than 10 years, artist Janeen Koconis has been on a mission to transform the mass-market world of greeting cards.

Where some cards offer pastels and passive sentiments, hers serve up bold, bright images along with the words of poets and authors. Let other cards feature shallow thoughts, she says; hers provide depth.

"I looked at the greeting-card industry and saw that there was so much potential in it," says Koconis, who markets her cards under KOCO NY, a company she founded.

"Why not take it to another level?" she asks. "Take the prosaic ordinary greeting card to another level that really allowed people to communicate with it?"

KOCO'S archives contain more than 750 original works -- posters, calendars, journals and cards. In each, words and phrases work together, she says.

	VIDEO
Koconis explains her design inspirations to CNN's Elsa Klensch. Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K

Words complement colors

But which comes first, the words or the art? That's a question with two answers.

"One comes first, but it's never predictable which one," Koconis says.

Koconis

Sometimes, says Koconis, the answer depends on what people are seeking, or which poet catches her attention.

"You know, I kind of fixated on D.H. Lawrence at one point," Koconis says. "So I kind of look at what I'm into. Sometimes I'm looking at visual information -- very graphic -- and other times I'm kind of deep into text."

Koconis says she prefers using original thoughts, or passages from lesser-known poets. "I don't like getting sucked into the fashion of the moment," she says.

Instead, she says, the cards try to create a "bridge" linking customers to her creations. "There's a place where their imagination has to finish the card or connect with it," she says.

Colors complement words

The cards' colors are just as memorable as the words accompanying them, says Koconis.

"I think color is important," Koconis says. "The subject matter expresses the message, the imagery ... expresses the message, the text expresses the message -- but so does the color."

Don't underestimate the big message a small card can contain, she says.

"Really, what's happening at its most profound level is that (a) folded piece of paper is allowing for a link or a bridge or a connection between the person sending and the person receiving it," Koconis says.

"So I think that what's possible with a greeting card is really incredibly profound," she says, "because it's going to that core place, that core part of our humanity."

CNN Style Correspondent Elsa Klensch contributed to this report.

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