Christmas Card Responses

Responding to short, quick briefs

I decided to challenge myself by entering the Christmas card competition brief as part of our responsive module. I knew it would be challenging as I have never entered a brief with 2 days to go until the deadline before. This extremely short time period meant that I had to approach the brief very differently to how I would usually.

I first worked out that with such a small amount of time, I would have to reduce the time spent on each stage of the process. My approach to this brief was to do everything in the same order throughout the process, but spend a day on each stage.

My previous blog shows the research I undertook before designing, which I only spent a few hours on. I scoured the web for existing designs that I could take influence from. 


Typographic Response

For the first response, I decided to produce a typographic design. This represents the Graphics department at the Uni.

The idea was to highlight the letters LCA within the type. This informed the decision to use this sentence in particular. 

The next step was to make the type look festive and relevant. 

The typeface most suitable to the design was this one. It's an illustrative typeface with details including snow and penguins.

After introducing the colour red, I then thought to refer to the college guidelines to inform the colours used.

Below is the final outcome and is a combination of colours features in the College guidelines along with the type and LCA logo enlarged in the background. The letters 'L' 'C' and 'A' are highlighted with green. This adds to the Christmas theme as well as representing the College.

It's A5 in size, as this is a requirement stated in the brief. It would be printed on thick stock and put inside an envelope with the college logo on the front.

Repeated Pattern

Inspired by a project on Behance, the next response focused on producing a festive repeated pattern. The first step was to design some pictograms that would then combine to make the pattern.

Adding some lines and rings, I composed the pictograms in a way that would produce a pattern similar to those you would typically find on a Christmas jumper. The slogan the brief states that has to be used is then placed in the centre as a focal point for the reader.

I first experimented with Christmas colours for the background, then moving on to colours found the the college guidelines.

These are also A5 in size and would also be on thick matt stock.

The problem with this design is that it doesn't communicate the college identity much. If I had time to redesign it, I would include the logo within the pattern.

Reindeer Mosaic

One of the words listed in the brief is friendly, for the final design I wanted to interpret this into something visual.

The first step was to think of something friendly and festive, I chose to use a reindeer.

The idea was to use the LCA logo as the red nose. This would put the logo in the focal point of the image whilst playing on traditional festive imagery.

I played around with the idea but decided that the nose would not be big enough to be obvious. This led me to think of other ways in which I could combine reindeers with the mosaic logo.

I came across this pictograms online and immediately gave me the idea to produce something similar but as a mosaic, typical of the college's visual identity, below is my response.

When getting feedback on the mosaic, the general consensus was that it does resemble a reindeer but it is not obvious enough at first and could do with some more details. I played around with introducing a red nose and asked my peers which one worked best, almost everyone saying that the one in the middle is most successful. Other details added includes the text on top of the logo and shading.

These are the college colour guidelines used throughout the visual identity of anything to do with the college. I also took inspiration from the examples of mosaic patterns produced by the college. 

Inspired by another one of the projects found online, I thought to produce a sleeve in which the mosaic pattern would sit. The sleeve would then leave exposed the logo within the design. Having something to pull out of the sleeve makes for a more interesting and engaging xmas card.

To keep consistent, I used the mosaic pattern on the front and back and used a serif typeface for the type as I couldn't find the official college font. All of the colours used are taken from the guidelines online as well as the shapes within the mosaic. 



Below are some type experiments along side the design. Adding snow creates more of a Winter feel to the colours and shapes.