A Look Behind the Scenes of Christmas Cards & The Design Process

I love creating the new products and designs every season but I think the holiday designs might be my favorite. I love the idea of being able to send joy out into the world in such a simple way: snail mail!

Yes I still adore sending and receiving letters in the mail especially during the holidays!

I recently created a custom line of holiday cards that can be personalized with family photos. I thought it was time to share another behind the scenes look at my design process and how these cards came to be.

The Sketching Phase

My sketching process for these Christmas cards actually started off as the designs for my foil prints. I picked fun holiday sayings and sketched them out with paper and pencil to begin. I also did some fun holiday doodles this year to give a playful touch to my designs. Once I sketched out plenty of ideas I went over the designs with my black marker to make it easy to create contrast once I moved to the computer. The last step of my sketches was to scan them in to my computer and start the digital process.

Let’s Get Digital

Once I had all of the designs scanned in I immediately went to Photoshop to clean up the files the same way I normally do. The in depth process is shown here and here if you want to see all the details! Once the sayings were in good shape I took my favorite ones to design the holiday cards.

Back to Paper & Pencil

Since I had the holiday sayings I wanted to use but still needed to create the layout of the holiday cards I went back to my sketching pad and did thumbnails to come up with ideas quickly. For each thumbnail I included the main elements for the cards: holiday saying, photograph, and a customizable message. I did thumbnails for the front and back since I knew having multiple options and customizations were necessary for these holiday cards.

Putting the Designs Together

The next step is to actually put the designs together using all of the individual elements. I start with placeholder boxes & copy. From there I added in backgrounds to give them a more joyful feel and subtle texture. I usually do quite a few layouts based on my thumbnail sketches until I find the ones that work best.

By starting with the simple thumbnails and outlines I can layer on the rest of the design elements until the final design feels right!

Another important part of putting the Christmas cards together was color! I wanted a modern take on classic holiday colors with added pops of vibrance. I started with the traditional red & green and transformed both to a darker and rustic version. From here I created a cohesive palette. I mostly used the colors in the  typography plus some subtle color blocks.

The Final Collection

The final collection includes 5 custom holiday cards along with 3 back options for each card. This gives variety to the final designs since they will all be unique to each family depending on the text and the amount of photos included. I can’t wait for others to be able to send these out into the world!

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