Christmas is coming...

Christmas is rapidly approaching, so I decided to celebrate with a festive blog post.

First up, I made a Christmas song a couple of days ago. A kind of chillout version of 'Carol of the Bells'. You can hear it here. It's inspired by the Thrice version, which can be found here.

Secondly, I was asked to design a Christmas card last week, and it's actually been really challenging. As a graphic designers I have an uncontrolable obsession with making things look nice, and I really struggled with designing a Christmas card that was Christmassy, but not cheesy.


If we think of some images associated with Christmas, we think the Nativity, stars, Father Christmas, Reindeer, baubles, trees, stockings, christmas puddings, holly, fireplaces, elves, pigs in blankets, turkey, snowflakes, candles and the list goes on. But most of these things are very tough to design without looking very cheesy.

Take a look at these, for example.

Sure, they're quite nice designs. Simple, stylish and well illustrated. Particularly Style A and Style E. But would I want one as a Christmas card? No.

They just don't 'feel' Christmassy. They're not warm and cosy and, but instead look quite cold, distant and very corporate. Like something I might get from a petrol station, perhaps. What I want is a nice scene of a cosy fire, children playing, snow falling and a classic Christmas carol to play, along with the smell of Turkey as I open the card. But I can't get that, and it would probably need to be a photo, and it's a photo I can't get. I tried being original, creating some fancy photomontage style design made of typical Christmas objects. It looked rubbish. I tried simple patterns, they looked rubbish. So in the end I settled for a nice Christmas tree made of stars, with a red background. It may be a little cheesy, it's certainly not original, but it's fine.

This is it without any text on yet, it's still unfinished. But you get the idea.

Christmas is probably my favourite time of the year, but as a designer, it's a nightmare.

If you're a designer yourself, Naldz Graphics have a great list of tutorials to help you in moments of distress!

http://naldzgraphics.net/tutorials/45-useful-illustrator-and-photoshop-tutorials-for-christmas-season/

Have a great Christmas everyone!