About the Author
Eilidh Dunsire
Resident brand strategist, designer, creative solution finder & ice cream appreciator.
It's Christmaaas! We normally make our own cards at Christmas time, it's a fun little break this time of year - something we definitely needed! So as usual, we made cards for our friends, family and clients.
Grab a hot chocolate and read about the making of the our 2020 festive cards: from design to printing, folding and posting!
1. Design
One side bids good riddance to 2020, and the other welcomes in 2021
We wanted the design to be bright and positive, something that would last beyond Christmas time. A little positivity on your desk at the end of the year and onto the new year.
So, instead of green and red we opted for brighter non traditional colours, and a reversible design: one side bids good riddance to 2020, and the other welcomes in 2021 (we are positive '21 will be a good one).
The two colour design is a restriction of our chosen print technique. The Risograph printer is capable of printing two colours at a time. We could have layered more colours on top, but opted for a a single print run for a more streamlined process.
Traditional colours, and trying out some tree based wreath patterns.
Making patterns in Illustrator is super satisfying. Abstracted trees, baubles and Terry's Chocolate orange segments!
Picking colours is hard! I really liked the pink and red, but contrast and readability might've been an issue.
Separated colour layers (left - red, right - blue).
2. Printing
The fun part! We haven't managed to get out to Peacock Visual Arts (check them out) this year at all with lockdowns so we were excited to get back and get printing!
We did 3 different paper stock variations:
- 225gsm Context Birch
- 170gsm Cairn Eco Kraft
- 170gsm Context Flint
Weeee!
3. Cutting & folding
The Riso prints on A3 sheets, which meant that we could get 4 cards per sheet.
The spine of the cards have to be scored before folding for a neat edge (got to have those sharp folds)!
Score those spines! (hipster scissors for show)
4. That's it!
Next was just writing them up and posting them out! We only did a small run this year since we are really busy, so we didn't send too many out.
But it's a fun break away from our usual creative briefs where we can really just do whatever we want in terms of design and creativity. It's so much fun being able to design something digitally and make it come to life in the real world from start to finish.
Some close ups:
