This year I was able to work on my Holiday Card during the Thanksgiving week-end. My Friday was black (with ink) and my computer was heating up, not from extreme on-line shopping but from working out and lifting heavy Illustrator and Photoshop files. This is my attempt to summarize in a slide show the creative process that finally gave birth to my 2010 Best Wishes Card. I hope this will inspire some of you – who are still in their brainstorming stage – to grab your favorite writing instrument and start sketching your ideas.
1- The Starting point
Last Year's Holiday Card
This is my 2009 Holiday Card. It wasn’t exactly my starting point, but more of a point of reference. I ended up using partially similar elements, but that was more coincidental than by design.
My parameters for this year’s card were the following:
- Kids: My children have to be on the card (I still think it is a nice custom)
- Format: I wanted a wide format . Last year was a 5in. x7in. This year I wanted something of a 16:9 aspect ratio, with a 10in. width. I ended up with a 3.7in. x 8.5in. mainly for cost reasons.
- Color : A few months back, I was tempted by a black and white or grayscale scheme, similar to the 2007 card. But looking at this gloomy year, I decided to go with a colorful palette with a wild and cheerful hue spectrum.
- Theme: I wanted a simple theme, joyful and strong, with a hint of child adventure, looking at a bright future. I settled on “Splendiferous” which I think fits the bill pretty nicely. Google it and you will see a plethora of definitions but they all have joy, grandiosity, splendid, extraordinary and all good stuff. I also manipulated the spelling to give it an extra oomph! (more on that later)
- Must have: And of course, I had to incorporate my infamous Best Wishes Phrase in French (I have been doing that since 1994) “Meilleurs Voeux de Bonheur et de Réussite, tant sur le Plan Professionel que sur le Plan Personel et Familial” which means “Best wishes for happiness and success both on the professional and personal / family side”.
- Style: Lettering wise, I was determined to do a “Gestural Writing” a la Yves Leterme. I was lucky to attend his workshop last Summer (It was a thrill). I wanted to give the card a free flow splendiferous gesture!
2- Naomi
Naomi - from a full color photo to a stylized sketch
Naomi didn’t want to be on the card to start with (She is 14 and likes to be considered on the grown-up side). Sifting thru the Summer photos, I stumbled on a picture that I liked (she didn’t). But we cut a deal, only a sketch of her face will be on the card.
I worked the photo in Photoshop first, then redrew the eyes and the eyebrows, the lips and a partial trace of the face and nose contours (some filters helped me determine where to draw).Then imported all that (except the hair) to Illustrator, where I added the doodling of the white vine curly shapes using a Wacom tablet with a slightly oval tip. I knew that the background will be a bright color, so I used dark orange temporarily. I later filled the lips with some red and the sliver of hair behind the forehead with magenta (but that was toward the end)
3- Kay
Kay - the rainbow hair will be blended with the gradient mesh background
Kay was happy to be on the card, but with 2 conditions : she wanted to wear a hat and she wanted fancy shmancy hair.
We did a quick photo shoot and I selected a nice photo with a big smile. In Photoshop, played with the “Note Paper” filter, did some cleanup and a color overlay, then imported the result into Illustrator. I traced the imported figure in Illustrator then separated the hat, the hair and the face, changed the color of the face, then using the blob brush tool, I drew the “fox tail” shape extended hair and filled it with the blended rainbow gradient. I was planning on using a combination of “darken” and “color burn” blending modes once I have the background, that is why I left the rainbow color for now.
4- Oscar
Oscar - changing the T-shirt color was done much later
After a couple of photo shoot sessions with Oscar, I was still not finding what I was looking for. In the 3rd session, I kept telling him jokes while shooting. I got a series of great pictures. I picked this one. Yes, his eyes are closed; Yes, he looks like an ipod ad, but this is the closest I found to convey the “Splendiferous” theme.
I did experiment with a variety of filters, but decided to keep it simple with a gradient map adjustment layer to convert the photo to Black and White. Much later on, I changed his T-shirt color because it was too dark not allowing to read the black lettering on top.
5 – Lettering part 1 – SplendifOrous
SplendifOrous, using a C-4 speedball nib
Simple goal : writing “Splendiferous” in gestural calligraphic style. I used exactly the same material as at Yves Leterme’s workshop: C-4 Speedball nib with a nice black ink (noodler’s) and a very smooth paper (Hammermill Laser Print 11×17). Also, I decided that it would be nicer to write “SplendifOrous” instead of “Splendiferous”. This way I can have Oscar standing in the middle of the card holding the “O”. In addition, a large “O” would provide a nice breathing space. It took me a while to warm up and I remembered (and understood) what Yves meant by practice every day.
After several and tedious attempts I was not getting anywhere near what I wanted. The geometry was fine, but that was about it. This is one of the many “splendiferous” that I wrote. I ended up including one (in small) in the final rendering. I guess it is OK, but far from splendiferous. Add to the misery that when I scanned it and “live traced” it in Illustrator, whatever sharpness and subtleties in the lettering was lost. Very tired and slightly discouraged, I decided to tackle this problem later and move on with other lettering.
6 – Lettering Part 2 – Writings for the background
Sample of selected pieces for the background
I wanted to blend a colorful background (not created yet) with a bunch of lettering of different styles. This will give a nice texture and will usually please the curious eye. I used a variety of writing tools mainly steel nibs, ruling pens and cola pens. With a nice / splendiferous music in the background, I wrote many happy things, and of course this is where I incorporated my infamous sentence “Meilleurs Voeux de Bonheur…”. It was a blast. After an hour or so, I collected what I found most suitable for the theme and scanned them, ready to be included in the final montage.
7- Lettering Part 3 – 2010
I used a pointed brush (double dipping) to write 2010
I wanted something that flows freely. I used a pentel pointed brush. After a few tries, I settled on a simple style that pleased me enough for the purpose : I am planning on using it in a small format on the side of the card. I wrote on a smooth paper (Hammermill). I used what I call the double-dipping technique : even though the brush is fully loaded from within its reservoir, I dip it in ink before writing each letter. This gives me the confidence of a guaranteed mark on paper even with the slightest brush / paper contact. Some people might think this is not good for the brush, but come on, this is a Pentel brush.
8- Lettering Part 4 – Back to Splendiferous
Splendiferous, completely done digitally with a Wacom Tablet
I have a decent handle of the Wacom Tablet, so I decided to give it a shot and go directly with digital lettering. To my surprise, it wasn’t as bad as I thought. You loose a number of terminal edges and you get occasionally some odd / unexpected behavior, but overall the results far exceeded my expectations, not to mention the beauty / blessing of the Ctrl-Z or Command-Z (i.e., the undo button). It took me less than 10 minutes to come up with a decent (genetically digital) Splendiferous. I experimented with various brushes and settled on the “Charcoal-Thin” brush with a 1pt Stroke width. This gave the writing a nice chalk effect. I never wrote an S like this until I saw Yves doing it last summer. This one is slightly squeezed but it serves the purpose. Along the process, I abandoned the idea of SplendifOrous, I was not getting the right balance. Notice also that I reversed the “i”, this can serve as an exclamation mark too!
9 – Drawing the Background
I used the Gradient Mesh in Illustrator to develop the background colors
As I mentioned earlier, I wanted a flashy colorful background. I started with a simple rainbow gradient fill, converted it to a gradient mesh and added a few columns and rows to the mesh. I placed the various elements on the background (the kids, 2010, splendiferous, splendiforous (reduced with a white stoke), experimenting with layout, positions, sizes, rotations, and blending modes. Next, I started playing with the gradient mesh nodes moving them and playing with the Bezier handles and swapping and merging colors between cells… until I was satisfied. Notice that I left the mesh fairly straight on the right hand side to match the vertical 2010, while I gave it a much more organic form in other areas.
10 – More lettering
I finally added the background writings that I had previously selected and scanned. I filled them with a variety of color gradients and scattered them around, tilting some and changing the appearance of a couple (outline instead of fill). Last, I used the “lighten” blending mode to allow the writings to melt nicely in the background.
11 – Final Touches
Final rendering of the front of the card
I couldn’t resist but draw a couple of swoosh ovals around Oscar (reminiscent of my original idea of SplendifOrous). Then I added (still with the Wacom Tablet) the white vertical writing on the right hand side (this time using a pressure sensitive 2 pt calligraphic brush with 100% roundness). Notice however that this writing is not 100% vertical but has a slight slant to the right. I didn’t do it on purpose but it didn’t bother me so I left it as is.
I continued experimenting additional blending modes and lowered the opacity of some layers. My last touch was the grey splatter over the white vertical writing. I did that using the symbol sprayer tool with the splatter symbol.
12 – The Flip side / or back-side
The Back of the card
For the flip side of the card (which measures only a third of the front side), I wanted something simple and easy to read in contrast with the front side. I settled on a simple 2010 outlined in Magenta (without even adjusting the kerning), and a wavy best wishes text. Notice the reversed “i” in splendiforously and the exclamation mark for the “i” in splendiferous.
13 – The envelope
Envelopes with the 2 selected colors
I took the Splendiferous developed for the card , enlarged a bit, nudged the “f” slightly to the right so it doesn’t touch the “d” for better legibility. I then increased the stroke width and changed the color to a light grey so it prints like a nice watermark on a color envelope. For the layout of the mailing address, I was constrained by the remaining available real-estate. I chose to go with a 2 liner, one for the name in Century Gothic, and one for the rest of the address in Tw Cen MT Condensed. I hope this will not be an issue for the postal services.
For the colors, I had narrowed my selection to the 3 dominant colors of the card : Orange, Magenta and Turquoise. My wife voted out Magenta, so I bought a pack of each of the other 2 colors.
14 – That’s it
Ready to mail
When I generated the press quality PDF from Illustrator, it warned me that some of the transparency might be lost. The card turned out beautifully with a nice sheen and a very accurate color reproduction.
Thanks for reading and I hope this brief helped your creative juices to start flowing!
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