Intellicor Communications

Holiday Card 2018

Design Process & Final Product

We stepped outside the box for our 2018 Holiday Card design. Our goal was to create a card with a handcrafted feel. The finished product is the culmination of conceptualization, found items, craft, scene creation, photography, and digital manipulation.

Intellicor won a 2019 Neographics Franklin Award for Excellence (Cards) for Holiday Card 2018 – Intellicor Communications.

ROLE

Concept, Art Direction, Design, Printing, Mailing

  • Conceptualization & Experimentation

    Thinking outside the box meant getting out of the office. As we walked around the property, we searched for objects that sparked ideas. We collected wood, twigs, berries, bark, and evergreen branches and approached the card design with the essence of play and experimentation.

    The found objects were put together, layered, and moved in a variety of arrangements until we created a pleasing layout to use as the basis for the design.

  • Preliminary Design & Scene Creation

    After arranging the objects in an interesting, cohesive design, we had the basis for our nature-focused winter scene.

  • Adding a Wintry Mix

    Snow completes our winter scene. Our "snow" is a fine, white, gritty cleaning substance sprinked on the wood palette, bark, berries, twigs, and greenery.

  • A Different Direction & Rework

    After reviewing the initial design, we felt the scene was a little too busy. To simplify the scene we removed the majority of the twigs and greenery. A single evergreen branch, which was cut and adjusted, became our single tree in the snow.

  • Fine Tuning

    Simplifying the design made the scene more powerful and natural. The arrangement was fine-tuned by moving the berries, mulch, and evergreen needles around to create a balance of color, while maintaining some of the design's random energy. The large piece of bark was added at the bottom of the design to hold the text that would be added digitally.

  • Taking it Digital

    After fine-tuning the hand-crafted scene, it was time to take it digital. High resolution photography was taken, and the design was pushed farther by color correcting, adding gold stars, our logo, additional textures, and typography using a combination of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe InDesign. The design was now ready for print production.

  • Print Production

    Our holiday card was printed with an iGen 5 digital press on Cougar® Natural Smooth 80 lb. Cover. The envelope was produced on matching Cougar® Natural Smooth stock, on an iJet digital printer, which allows 4-color printing, and bleeds on 3 sides.