'Tis the season to do something self-initiated and once again design and advertising agencies have been producing festive cards, videos, games and posters to add to the postal backlog we're currently experiencing.
How important is this tradition? Self-initiated work is often great fun and an opportunity to produce something without constraints. The challenge of a Christmas-themed piece is to produce something great that hasn't been done before.
A couple of years ago we released our Pantone-inspired Christmas by Colour poster. It was really well-received, featuring on countless blogs and it even earned us our first Roses Design Award. It certainly helped to raise our profile within the design community and we've been on the look out for this year's assortment of Christmas crackers.
D&AD are currently in the middle of their Ad-vent calendar (kudos for the play on words) where they are celebrating some of the best Christmas-related design over the years. We highly recommend you have a look, but before you all rush off here's a few that haven’t had the yellow pencil nod.
Twitter Knitter by Saint and RKCR/Y&R has had half the design world wracking their brains for the best festive lines, hoping to see their yuletide tweets knitted onto scarves for the homeless in Camden Town. A great way to spread some Christmas cheer and increase brand awareness.
Quietroom’s Santa Brand Book is a lovely example of seasonal wit. The scatter and fen diagrams are particularly successful. You can peruse the document and check you are conforming to Santa™ brand guidelines here.
Love Creative are taking advantage of the in-vogue QR codes. Each day a code can be scanned to reveal a treat including vouchers or simply a cool YouTube video. We've also spotted this wrapping paper which seems to work in a similar way.
Magpie Studio have produced another beautiful piece of work with two old dears, Holly and Ivy as the stars of the show. Just looking at the party hat perched on the silver set reminds us of many happy Christmases with our grannies.
Also, just because they're fantastically simple – here’s The Chase’s postage stamp card and Volkswagen’s snowflake.
