OUGD603: Christmas Joy! Development

After sketching out ideas I began to consider the style of illustration I wanted to use. I had previously used a single line 'messy' style of illustration for a poster design inspired by Picasso's single line drawings. I really liked producing this style, it was a lot more freeing than my usually constrained 'perfect' outlines and fit better with the way I sketched on paper. Oddly the final results looked more professional than clean, crisp line art so I decided to experiment and use it again.

Comparing it to my traditional line art the messy style looked far more comfortable and professional so I applied it to the other elements of my design.

Whilst digitising the sketches I worked on top of a brown paper texture to make sure whatever I produced would look good on the final stock choice. After producing the individual elements I considered how they would be laid out on the paper. I decided that a repeat pattern design would look the best, the detail of the design comes from the illustration style and so keeping the pattern and final look as simple as possible will produce the most aesthetically pleasing final product. 

It was here when I decided to produce two different papers using the mistletoe as my soul evergreen plant. As a set the two different designs manage to look good on their own but also work together and if they are to be sold on a christmas stall I would like to sell cards, paper, envelopes and tags all in one set with two matching yet contrasting designs that would work together under a tree. 

This would also mean I can add a packaging element to the project, extending it further into real world contexts beyond wrapped presents and cards.

So following on from the set idea I began to apply the designs to christmas cards. I played around with lots of different looks to find out which ones worked best, producing both image and type and image based designs. The type face of choice was century gothic. I chose this very clean, organised and simple font to juxtapose the messy, free and detailed look of the illustrations and create a balance for the whole image.

After gaining some feedback the consensus was that the third idea worked best. The design found the right balance between text, image and space having just enough detail to be interesting and eye catching without going over the top and becoming too complicated.