Crafting a Great Impression
It’s officially past December now and we wanted to take a moment to say thank you for the fantastic year. This past year, Fine Citizens partnered with some amazing clients. Each provided projects that resulted in wonderful collaboration and success. As we look forward to 2016 with anticipation, we also want to take a moment to look back and share with everyone how Fine Citizens got full-on festive this holiday season.
Like all projects, our holiday card started with a brainstorming session; however, this one included homemade hot chocolate, peppermint candy, and a few festive tunes to excite the warmth and joy of the season. After a few sips of the delightful drink, some cheerful discussion, we landed on the theme: A few of our favorite things. Yes, this is a song from the Sound of Music. How it became the wintry song that is played at Christmas is a mystery in itself, but that’s another story.
Being a digital agency, we strive to connect with people through our work every single day. This can be difficult when a thin piece of glass is always between you and the people you’re trying to reach. Yet, we move beyond that barrier to create a product that resonates with others. So when it came down to deciding how we wanted to say thanks to our clients and friends, we chose to go with a physical card. Something tangible and textured, that allowed recipients to step away from the smooth glass barrier of their devices.
As we continued to brainstorm, the concept was further solidified. We would create a unified “favorite things” custom icon set and pair it with a hand-lettered message. To be able to step away from the digital universe and flex other creative muscles was the perfect side project for the chaotic holiday season.
Holly Jolly Icon Creating
If you have ever chosen to create an icon set this can be a daunting feat. It may seem simple at first, but choosing the right symbol and making all the icons cohesive is extremely difficult. This icon set captures the simplicity of each object while highlighting specific details for that “at a glance” recognition. The icons include everything from gardening, snowflakes, ornaments, cheese, wine, paw-prints, coffee and swords to the coveted homemade Baker family apple butter. The set integrates our favorite things and the different symbols of the holiday season to create an atmosphere of Fine Citizens holiday cheer.
After completing the set, each icon was scaled and laid out to form a pattern. The final pattern wove a few of our favorite things that we wanted to share, but no icon could ever express.
Holiday Spirited Letter-Slinging
Many different options were explored for the hand-lettered font. A mono-weight script best captured the elegance and grace we wanted the card to personify. Scripts are commonly used in lettering. The key to script lettering is the flow of all of the letters together. Finding the proper balance between letterforms, flourishes, and ornaments can be a difficult task. This meant that our simple phrase of “A few of our favorite things” saw many iterations before finding the perfect combination.
After the sketch is refined, it is inked, scanned and brought into Adobe illustrator to where it is refined again.
The Beauty in the Details
Once the artwork was completely finished, we visited our friends over at Igloo Letterpress to see how we could bring our card to life. Alison and Beth were both extremely patient with us. They took the time to answer all of our questions and helped us decide how we wanted our cards to be printed. After viewing some samples, we selected 110 bright white 100% cotton cover stock paper and paired it with majestic silver ink. We also chose a rich wild cherry envelope for each card to be gently tucked into before we sent them out to everyone.
The Final Touches
While the cards were being pressed with love and care, we were staying busy by hand signing each insert in silver ink. The insert carried warm-wishes for the recipient:
“Hoping you and yours have a wonderful holiday season full of your favorite things”
Once the cards arrived and all the inserts were signed we began to add the final handcrafted touch; hand sewing the two together. A silver thread spine literally became the detail that tied it all together. Overall, the card came out beautifully and we were extremely proud to spread some holiday cheer this year.
