At Home For Christmas

Lewis Hamilton is most at home on the race track. Tammy Abraham is most at home on the football pitch (don’t judge me), I’m probably most at home in a handy piece of design software you may have heard of, Adobe Illustrator. So when I was tasked with creating WDL’s Christmas card for this year, there was only really one approach I was going to take; the illustrated approach.

In previous years we’ve kept cards fairly simple, in both design and print. Last year, myself and fellow designer Richard opted to change that up a little. Instead of cards we went with Santa’s branding guide, which was well received by our clients. It was something different and unusual, which hopefully was looked at for longer than the normal 5 seconds you take when opening a card.

However, this year we’ve reverted back to the standard Christmas card approach and I’ve gone with an intricate illustration that only required a couple of Illustrator’s tools. The pen tool and shape tool, aka, a designer’s best friend.

Putting Up The Trimmings

All shapes and elements you see on the card are hand (mouse?) created by yours truly. Sticking with a single stroke weight I was able to create a detailed piece featuring all aspects of Christmas, from snowflakes to stars to candy canes and baubles. A few additional shapes were brought into the mix to really define detail and to use the client’s term, “make it pop”.

One of the obvious aspects of this year’s card design is the symmetry. It makes it visually appealing and easy for your mind to digest. You see some designs and they’re too asymmetrical and you become the Sarlacc Pit, digesting it for one thousand years (yes, I did just reference Star Wars). Symmetry is great for patterns, backgrounds and intricate designs, it also means you only have to do half the work, just mirror it! While that may be the case, I opted to play around with one of the main focal points in the design, the Christmas tree. By making this one asset asymmetrical, an extra level of detail is added.

The Final Touches

One of the noticeable differences between this year’s card and previous ones is the printing finish. It’s true, designers are weirdos, just the other day, myself and Richard were fantasising about a typography advent calendar. Imagine how we feel about foil printing! Ohhh the adrenaline rush! After some print sourcing, we found what we were after. Uploading the necessary files, I set the illustration layer to be printed in silver foil with the background of the card being black with a matte finish.

Christmas Comes Early

Unwrapping presents on Christmas morning… Opening your Christmas card order on a wet November afternoon… I don’t quite know what I prefer. But seeing the light glisten off the foil blocking for the first time, it’s as memorable as your baby’s first words I imagine.

As a team, we’re thrilled with how our cards came out. The design style has informed our Christmas popups and emails, as well as a collection of illustrations we’re sharing on social media throughout December.