When my clients at The Happy Caravan Company/Melton Tourer Services got in touch to ask me to design their Christmas card they gave me the kind of brief I love. The conversation went something like ‘can you design us a Christmas card? We don’t mind what it says.’ So I got to work to create a lovely festive card that they could send out to their customers. Here’s how I did it.

Working with their existing branding

The Happy Caravan Company is a Leicestershire based company providing servicing and maintenance for caravans and motor homes. It’s not the most obviously festive business. Thankfully, that doesn’t prevent you from sending out a great Christmas greeting. I’d already redrawn their logo for them so they could use it in a few different places so I started there. When you’re creating a card or any other Christmas design it’s important that your business is still recognisable. That way your customers will open their Christmas card and instantly know it’s from you. They’ll also be reminded of your business every time they see the card on their mantelpiece.

The Happy Caravan Company logo is a cute cartoon character that usually looks like this:

It’s instantly recognisable but the colour and pattern makes you think of summer holidays rather than Christmas. To create the card I decided to use the logo but change the colour and pattern to something more festive. I chose red and green as they’re classic Christmas colours. They also work well with the cartoon feel of the logo. I changed the sun pattern for snowflakes, altering the format to break up the design. It’s important to consider your overall business branding when you create Christmas images. For example, you could choose ice blue or silver if your branding uses cooler colours.

Creating a personal feel

Next, it was time to choose the font. My Christmas card designs include text on the front as well as a printed greeting inside. I knew that the owners were likely to be sending a lot of cards so wouldn’t have time to write in all of them. I chose a script based font as it looks more like handwriting so would still feel personal. Changing the font also gave the whole card a festive feel. The text itself included a Christmas message as well as both of the owners’ first names to make it a personal greeting.

The results

The clients wanted to get the card printed themselves so I delivered the final design by email as a pdf. Here’s how the finished card looked:

It looks like a simple design but it feels Christmassy while also reminding everyone who receives it of The Happy Caravan Company every time they look at it. The client was really pleased with the design and I’ve recently finished working on their design for this year. I wish I could give you a sneak preview, but it’s under wraps for now!

If you’d like to create a beautiful Christmas card to send to your customers and contacts this year, please get in touch.