christmas card commission for elmley

1. Becky Bond

2. The brief
• Christian motifs
• Nothing cute
• Arts funding organization
• Abstract
• Artsy Christian trust fund, abstract
• Seasonal – winter-y
• You can use and morphe the Elmley logo
• 3 day brief

3. Make the circle out of little
drawn motifs

4. Type based card, small
motif and lots of empty
space.

5. • White circle at the centre of Christmas colour stripes?
• Tiny little images repeat pattern, certain ones coloured in to make a
design
• Pattern based outcomes

6. Christmas Spirit Idea
• a bottle
• Festive
• Rum
• Cute
• May you be filled with Christmas spirit

12. Merry
Christma
s!
Merry
Christmas!

13. This idea of making a tree out of a single shape repeated
didn’t translate very well in practise.

15. I made this text in illustrator using the pen tool,
width tool and a lot of practise to get it to an okay
level. I wanted big, friendly, curly text, with varying
widths and flows. I couldn’t come up with a
composition which I thought looked good.

16. I made a pattern of different layers of green rectangles in different
shades. I wanted to experiment with turning this pattens into a tree in
different formats. This would give me a chance to explore Illustrator
software, somewhere interesting to start with, as well as hopefully a
chance to find some interesting routes to go down.

22. I thought a jazzy handwritten text was in keeping with the nature of this card and its patterns. I then remembered the
previous cards that Elmley had chosen were quite simple and bland so I thought I should try to tone it down a little.

24. After making those and developing that idea, I then found a
3D tool. It turned my patterns into a 3D model of a tree
and I loved it. I thought it looked quirky and was a modern,
artsy take on a classic Christmas tree motif.
I liked the emphasis of the star, it has religious connotations
especially at Christmas.
I think the more traditional type worked better than the
hand writing typeface from before. It’s more festive.

25. I wanted to illustrate a bottle on Illustrator, but I don’t
think this was the right project for it. Alcohol can have
negative connotations, while Christmas can be a nice
occasion for festive drinks, it isn’t particularly linked to
a Christian theme.
I used this as practise for my own personal
development, later creating a Cola bottle for a vintage
advert of a cola company as a Christmas card.

27. • I realised with this project that I wasn’t great at greetings cards, so I wanted to
improve.
• I ended up making a couple for a uni craft sale. I made just over £20 selling them
for a pound each and I got positive reactions from a lot of people.
• My style is subversive and quite inappropriate and I hoped I would find my target
audience in an arts uni craft fair.
• I predominantly aimed these cards at teenagers - young adults, uni students like
myself. I had a few 30-45 year olds buy some too which showed that I hadn’t
limited myself to my target audience, I had actually found a secondary target
audience in artsy people of a wider range of ages.
• It also showed that I hadn’t focused enough on aiming my things towards the
secondary target audience, or even thought about them.
• I learnt with these cards that less is more, which for Elmley I hadn’t quite
grasped.
• I also learnt that creating mood boards of the target audience is vital, especially
when I am not personally in that demographic.