I have a Gal. She lives online, she looks like me, and I love her. I got her off designhergals.com, and I am duty bound now to share the secret with all of you. Not only is it my own personal favorite site of the past several months, but it’s a smash hit with every woman (and man in the market for a gift) whom I refer to it. I’m raving. And loving. I’m encouraging you to check it out and to buy some product.
But first, let me tell you how I found the Gals.
It all started in Curacao, believe it or not. My friend Charyn had the cutest business cards, with a watercolor-style logo of a gal that looked just like her next to some fun supplementary copy. Not super-scary professional in the way of a corporate card. But then, we are not corporate people. By choice. In fact, Charyn is a food writer.
“My cards used to say, I want ALL the cake,” she confided.
I was, understandably, curious about what identity design firm would create such a sleek-looking logo and then let its customer announce “I want ALL the cake” on the collateral. Most identity designers don’t allow that sort of thing.
But this did not end up being the work of an identity designer. Instead, it was something Charyn had created herself on my new favorite site:
Guests utilize a Flash app to design a young lady, much like playing virtual paper dolls. You dress the image, accessorize it and upload it into the stationery product of your choice. (Charyn and I both chose business cards, but you can also get greeting cards, bookmarks, aprons, coffee cups and all manner of other customized logo merchandise.) A portion of the proceeds from every order is donated to a breast cancer charity, which makes the product even more appealing, in my eyes.
It probably took me an hour to design my Gal, and another to re-attire her and change the copy 12 zillion times. But still, it was less expensive and less complicated than any other stationery order I’ve ever made (and there have been many).
I used my (blonde, mini-skirted, magic-wand-carrying) Gal on plain white, standard business cards. (I suppose I could have ordered some logo coffee cups, but that would have necessitated my buying a much larger carrying case. Possibly a wheelbarrow.) I passed her out everywhere from the Las Vegas Convention Center to Jay-Z’s 40/40 Club to the American Lodging Investment Summit to the Rose Bar in Manhattan. She was a huge hit and inspired many women to ask where they could procure similar cards of their own.
This is what I told them:
Go to the site without delay, and design away. But know that once you do, you’ll be hooked. It’s free to create an image, and the site will store all Gals and product designs in your account forever. So if you feel like creating a sparkly Gal with a magic wand one day and a Gal in a business suit and briefcase the next, you can. Just don’t get carried away and start thinking you own the images, because the copyright belongs to the site owners. As it should.
That said, founder Jeanne Fitzmaurice is thrilled at the idea of entrepreneurs everywhere using her Gals to promote their businesses and inspired ideas.
“My mission is to foster fanatical fans of our brand, and continue to bring new products and benefits to those who enjoy using our site,” she told me during our first-ever communique. “We currently have nearly 250,000 community members on our site. But we have a big goal, and getting our word out is important to raising funds.”
Well, here’s fanatical fan No. 250,001, doing her bit to help out.
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2008 at 11:17 am and is filed under Uncategorized, Resources, My Network. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.3 Responses to “Rave: DesignHer Gals”
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February 26th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
I went there. I really had some fun, but I’m a 5′5″ short round woman. They had pregnant gals, but no Rubenesque silhouettes. I’d LOVE to find a gal to look like me, but until there’s a way to stretch them sideways, it’s not happening!
February 26th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
I actually think Jeanne might want to know this. I will email your comment to her.
February 26th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
Thanks DeBorah and Lena for your comments and support! Deborah — we do actually have some rounder gals available on the site. If you choose the rounder gal and after designing her- you can choose OUTFITS and in the first few rows(after the Moms2Be — are outfits that will make the gal “rounder”
With the passion and purpose to raise funds andawareness for stage IV breast cancer patients it is important that we do represent all women — therefore we are planning to develop another body type specifically for the “real” woman and hope to launch that by year end. In the meantime I invite DeBorah to email me a photograph of herself and we will design-her own custom Gal with our compliments. jeanne@designhergals.com — Again– thank you for all your kind words and support!
Jeanne Fitzmaurice
Founding Gal