Every year here at Wakefield College, we are given the opportunity to participate in a competition, giving all art students a chance to project their strongest techniques by designing a Christmas card. We were told not to use ANY traditional Christmas materials, but to experiment beyond that. We were also informed that the chosen winning Christmas card would be distributed to many different areas in Wakefield such as: Local councillors, Wakefield council, MP’s, Universities, Arts and Culture organisations, local high schools, West Yorkshire colleges, employers and work placement providers. This competition was massively important to us students in our second year as if these cards were being sent to Universities that we are considering applying for, we want to give a good impression and show off our skills and knowledge of art/graphics.
We were asked to do simple and rapid research of already existing greeting cards, figuring out how we can do ours differently but with the same aim of approach to our audience. We had to think about how our own skills and techniques of visual elements in graphic design could be used for this task and how our greeting cards could be formed to stand out amongst others.
Above my analysis is my Christmas greeting card made for the 2019 release to local ares mention prior to this. I enjoyed the sense of freedom given along with this challenge as we were told to be creative and were given limited rules and obligations for this. I was able to reflect my personality onto this greetings card, without fear of judgement which made this particular assignment a lot more enjoyable for me.
I decided to use this opportunity to enhance my alternative style and transfer it onto my work to give the effect of the card portraying my persona, this was just a concept following up with thinking out of the box and exiting my comfort zone. Hence why i used ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ as my inspiration for the background imagery of my card. I think the deep red colour really compliments other colours involved, especially the mistletoe green, giving it a professional feel. Although we were told not to use traditional Christmas media, i did incorporate a classical ‘Merry Christmas’ typography writing at the top, in white, ensuring the customer purchasing knows this is an appropriate Christmas card to purchase.
Overall, i feel as though my Christmas card results were greater than i anticipated, by far. I am over joyed with how it looks-especially in comparison to the one i created last year:
Seeing the difference and level of improvement between both Christmas cards gives me a sense of pride and i feel motivated to keep pushing my abilities, even if i don’t particularly like/enjoy the assignment given.
Farrel Holford 