itbmac: Holiday Card Design

It's that time of the year, Christmas Time (the Holiday season if you want to be politically correct). I was given the task of designing this year's Christmas card by my mom.

I took drawing lessons this summer and I learned how to draw with pen & ink. My mom was expecting a pen & ink drawing of a snow covered tree with our pets sitting under it. I just didn't feel passionate about this design. For one thing, a quality pen & ink drawing would take 10+ hours. The major problem for me was the fact that it has been done before; it is a bit cliched.

So I first started experimenting with Photoshoping pictures of the Avon Lake Metro Parks trail I took last winter. At first I was thinking of making the card a black and white winter scene, give it a classic, yet unconventinal feel.

My first idea was to have three stacked woods photographs; The bottom photo would be the snow covered ground, the middle photo would be the trunks of trees and the top photo would be the tops of trees and the grey sky.

I had started experimenting with ways of adding depth to the photographs. What I landed upon was that turning the contrast all the way up had a nice effect on the black and white photography. Then the image should be duplicated. One of the copies had its brightness turned all the down and the other had it turned all the way up.

Below is a break down of the photos I was just explaining and it also happens to be my second design.

Original Photo

Max Contrast & Min Brightness

Max Contrast & Max Brightness

Max & Min Brightness Photos Combined with 60% Opacity

Photograph of California Shore View

Zoomed in on a Group of Clouds

Tree Photograph with Clouds Color Burned In*

*Color Burn burns in the color of the upper layer with the lower layer. No part of the image will get lighter.

Solid Purple Color Layer put as top layer with 39% Opacity and Difference Effect Applied*

*Difference reacts to the differences between the upper and lower layer pixels. Large differences lighten the color, and small differences darken the color.

This final layer was added to give the photo a vintage/antique feel.

I really liked the end result of this photograph. The only problem is that it isn't Christmassy for the cards, so it was on to the next idea.

Next I thought about taking a Christmas light photo from last year and editing it. I didn't have any photos of our house though, so I choose one of someone's house. The photo was a bit blurry though cause it was take as the car was moving so I knew I was going to have to deal with that.

I decided to make the photograph into a vector image (made out of shapes). This would disguise the blur and make it more like a gingerbread house. I came up with two different versions; one that was black & white (and more cutout) and one that was color (and showed more details).

I wasn't that happy with the result. It look amateurism and was unoriginal. So I went back to the drawing board. I was having difficult thinking of something and then Abby Leigh suggested "draw a snowflake." Boom! I had the idea. I would draw a snowflake in pen & ink. Take a picture of it, edit it in snowflake and put a picture of the snowy forest ground behind it.

Now it was just time to execute the plan. As I search google to see what different snowflakes looked like, I realized that drawing the entire flake would be insanely difficult, especially if it were to be symmetric. So I decided that I would draw one half of a flake tip and then use Photoshop to make it into an entire flake.

Part of snowflake draw in pen & ink

Whole snowflake made by duplicating pen & ink drawing in Photoshop

Next it was time to think about what would be behind the flake, so I looked through my pictures from last winter and found this photo of the snow and leaf covered forest floor.

After a little bit of Photoshopping I arrive upon the design below. At the time I really like it, but looking now it looks rather simplistic and one demensional.

My mom once again didn't think it was Christmassy enough, but thought that a thin red border might do the trick. I came up with three different border ideas; a thin red one like Momma prescribed, a candy cane stripe that is reminiscent of Kanye's 808 & Heartbreak album artwork and a combination of the thin border and candy cane.

My mom insisted upon the thin red stripe so I gave in and thought I was finished. But a day later I was thinking about it and I though that it wasn't my best work. It didn't take nearly long (yes, if you actually stuck with me this long you're probably thinking, "Are you kidding me?!") The image lacked depth.

So I went to work thinking of ways to give it more life. Below are the steps I took.

Took snowflake and duplicated patterns throughout entire layer to add greater detail. I call this a psych level.

Psych layer with background layer.

Inverted colors of psych/background layers.

Add white snowflake, thin red border and a solid red layer (color burned with 11% opacity & 42% fill*)

*The difference is that opacity affects all of the layer including layer effects. Fill only affects the layer content, but not layer effects.

It was time to see what "the mom" thought once again. She agreed that it definitely had more depth but thought it was too dark. So .... time to make more changes!

Got rid of red layer and put in light blue layer (overlay* with 74% opacity)

*Overlay multiplies the light colors and screens the dark colors.

At least 15 more steps occurred in between this photo and then end product. The steps were often complex and acted as additive effects (on their own made little different, but worked together to create an effect). The snowflake was filled in and a thin dark border was placed around the flake. The end product is suppose to look like a snowflake sitting on top of a frozen lake that is starting to crack/thaw.