Assignment 5 - Christmas Card (FIRST DRAFT)

For this assignment, our instructions were to design a christmas card for NUS Centre For The Arts, so our design had to incorporate elements of Christmas (obviously, since it's a Christmas card) and some elements to show the diversity of the arts.

When it comes to Christmas cards, i normally like to go simple with incorporating commonly recognised Christmas symbols like a snowflake, Christmas tree, tree ornaments, candy canes, gift boxes etc. instead of landscapes or people. So i worked around these elements while keeping the need to incorporate arts elements inside it.

So i decided on the following idea:

I've always liked a snowflake as a symbol for Christmas as every snowflake is different and it's really up to you to come up with the shapes. Also, the spikes and partitions allows me to play with shapes. Instead of the usual straight cut-outs you see in snowflakes, i replaced it with elements of the arts with a treble, harp, guitar, dancer and a paintbrush and palette (hence covering the visual art and performing arts component). I used a star as a centre piece because, well what's Christmas without stars? The surrounding small dots represents snow.

Here's what happens after i designed it on the computer:

I rearranged the arts elements a little as the original sketch had the treble, harp and guitar all on the same side, which was a bit too much 'musical' in on one side. I also used a classical guitar instead of an electric one as i did in the sketch as it looked out of place with the other more 'classical' images.

The following are my 7 different colour schemes (i couldn't decide which light blue was better for the first colour):

I personally like all the colour schemes as i feel they are very Christmas-ish and i love everything about Christmas. I actually don't think (4) is very dull at all, it gives a rather matured and vintage feel? Was quite surprised at how it turned out.

This assignment was really interesting as i love Christmas and i do make Christmas cards, just never on Adobe Illustrator! Looking forward to the critic session on Wednesday!