Brief
Create a range of cards for sentiments or events that are worthy of a greetings card, but are currently not catered for by card manufactures.
The cards could be linked to other calendar events, obscure Saints days, sporting calendars or any other happening that is worth celebrating or commiserating. You may wish to explore some of life’s other landmarks that currently don’t feature in greetings cards, like getting your first grey hairs, being released from prison or any other personal landmark someone might want to share.
What am I being asked to do?
The brief for this task is for me to design three greetings cards for events which cards are not catered for. My goal is to come up with an exciting outcome to the brief with unique ideas that are worthy of a card.
How will the client judge a successful outcome?
The designs of the cards have to be appealing and interesting. I don’t have many limitations with this brief and the task is pretty straight forward. I am going to take advantage of this and try to use my lateral thinking skills to come up with something worthy of attention.
What are the keywords of the brief?
Create cards that are “worthy of a greetings card, but are currently not catered for by card manufactures.”
“The cards could be linked to other calendar events, obscure Saints days, sporting calendars or any other happening that is worth celebrating or commiserating.”
Coming up with ideas
When it comes to creativity the main thing that motivates me is to design something that I can relate to, this is really what sparks my interest. I am going to create a mind map to write down all the recent events that have taken place around me whilst keeping the brief in my mind.
I noted down a few events that took place in my life over the past year. I think this is a good a way to come up with an idea because other people will share similar experiences as me, which in return is going to help me come up with an idea for a greetings card.
The three events that I am going to choose are: “losing your first tooth” “achieving your black belt” and “laser eye surgery”. I can construct an idea with any of the events on my mind-map but the three I picked are the ones that caught my attention the most.
Greetings card 1
The first event which I decided to create a greetings card for was “Losing your first tooth”. The incentive behind this idea is quite personal to me which is why I chose this subject. I have a younger brother who suffers from high functioning autism who faces many battles every day, a regular task that a normal person would go through is a huge event compared to someone who is autistic. One of the recent struggles which we have been facing is pulling out his teeth, we have a huge amount of anxiety around this subject, however I can use this ‘landmark event’ to create a greetings card.
Usually I like to sketch my ideas on paper, but because I have re-injured my rotator cuff in my shoulder I am unable to do so. I decided to go on to Pinterest for some inspiration and I found a few designs which I liked. These are the pictures that I saved.
After analysing these pictures I really liked the colour scheme and the aesthetics of them. I decided to play around on adobe photoshop where I came up with my own design. This is how my final design looked.
Final Design
I was very happy with how my design looked. I think the colour scheme and the picture of the fairy flying away with the tooth makes for a perfect greetings card for a young child that has just lost his tooth.
Greetings card 2
The second greetings card I designed was titled “congratulations, you have achieved your black belt”. Achieving a black belt in martial arts is a very significant event. It takes years of hard work and strenuous training and not many people have the discipline to complete it. My younger cousin was recently awarded his black belt and I was extremely proud of him because I was the one who introduced him to martial arts. This is a very worthy event which is deserving of a greetings card.
At first I was sceptical with how I was going to approach this design but after looking at a range of different pictures on Pinterest I had a variety of ideas popping up in my head. These are the pictures that I saved.
These were the main images that I combined to come up with a unique design. This is what my final design looked like.
Final Design
Unlike my first greetings card this one was different, the idea wasn’t just to make the colour scheme look pretty. I wanted my images to have more meaning. The first thing I designed was the clock, the numbers on the clock aren’t telling the time in its place I have put dates of the years. The clock hands point to the years 2014 and 2019, this refers to the years that my cousin started his training and the year that he achieved his black belt. I created a silhouette of a student and a master bowing to each other which is something that is part of the martial arts culture and the black belt ceremony. I then placed a picture of the black belt in front of the clock because this is the main theme of the project. I showed my cousin the card that I made and he was astonished at the detail.
Greetings card 3
A close friend of mine recently had laser eye surgery and I thought that this would be an excellent idea to create a greetings card for. I left myself very little time for this task compared to the previous two so I got cracking straight away. I started browsing on Pinterest for some inspiration but I couldn’t find anything. so I began to type random stuff like “laser vision” and I got a few interesting pictures.
I spent a long time creating a set eyes shooting out laser. But once I added the background I knew I had to add more detail because the eyes on its own looked out of place.
I then went onto add more detail. I began by creating a face to go with the eyes. I then added a blurry effect in front of my image which is when my design started to look more impressive. I then placed two sentences on each corner of the card and my design looked full and complete. At the time I didn’t feel happy with the design because I felt like I rushed myself. However, looking back at it now I feel more content.
Final Design
Overall thoughts
Looking back at my greetings cards I feel happy with the ideas that I came up with. I was able to find an outcome to the brief with things from my personal life which is something I really enjoyed. Also my fluency in using Adobe Software’s is increasing which is making my confidence grow.
OCA Graphic Design 