Behind the Scenes: Designing the MSLK Holiday Card

Like many companies, our holiday card is our number one opportunity to connect with our busy clients on a more personal and emotional level. Traditionally, we like to create a design that is also a mini gift, something everyone can either use or hang on to. This year, we were invited by the non-for-profit group, Robin Hood Foundation, to create a customizable, limited edition design that companies and individuals can purchase online and use as their own holiday card. In the spirit of giving, 100% of the proceeds goes directly to fighting poverty in New York City. The Challenge The challenge for this year’s card was to create a simple, festive, non-denominational card that appealed to a wide target audience. Sounds easy, but for designers who are met with the same staid seasonal imagery and themes year after year, the trick is to stay inspired. See how our idea was informed by experimenting with simple shapes. Inspiration Our inspiration started with capturing the spirit of New Year’s Eve at midnight. There’s so much imagery that lends itself to this idea of celebration, hope and excitement, but we needed something that could uniquely work in this situation and didn’t feel too cliché. We were drawn to the simple idea of streamers. They can be quite beautiful and graphic, and the simplicity of the form could give us the flexibility to work in a message. We started exploring the form to see what more we could find. We used paper to simulate streamers. We particularly liked the opportunity for each streamer to create a form. Perhaps a form that carried a message. With that in mind, we returned to the drawing board to see if we could put it on paper. From there, we developed a solid pencil sketch that would serve as the basis for our design. Once the idea and the general form were set, the rest was really just pulling the form together and working on details to get everything just right. And… voila! A holiday card is made. The cards will be available soon on the Robin Hood website for purchase. Stay tuned for details.