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| 10 Nov 2006 02:38:14 am |
 Custom Family Portrait Christmas Card Design Tips and Ideas |
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Everyone is asking for Christmas Photo Card design ideas, so I'll postpone the family posing ideas post till a later time. Newborn photography and baby photography are so rewarding, but one of the most rewarding aspects of my job is designing custom birth announcements and greeting cards. Hopefully by sharing these ideas with all of you, I've inspired some creativity in your own designs.
So I'm going to walk you through some of my design ideas. I'm going to use some images from a recent family portrait session at the park.
One of the reasons I chose these images is to demonstrate some creative ideas for designing a 'sibling' Christmas photo card where one of the siblings isn't quite enthusiastic about the session.
I knew from previous sessions with the kids, that this Christmas card photo session might be a little challenging to get a good image of the two of them together. So I had planned to take some close-ups and crop later. As it turned out, it was a good idea. So you'll see in the designs below that I predominantly designed around tight face crops.
I also knew going in to the shoot that 'black' would be the color of choice. The kids would be wearing black, and the mom is partial to black backgrounds.
So with that setup, let's jump right in!
Custom Photo Christmas card 1: Close-up of pink skirt
The inspiration for this one came from a creative cropping exercise. I knew I wanted to have two tightly cropped face shots but I wanted more than just a plain black background. So I made a small file in photoshop and added an image from the session. Since the image is way bigger than the file I'm using I can easily move the image around to find an interesting area to crop out.
My original thought was to get a nice close-up crop of the rocks. But after doing the cropping exercise, I found that a close-up of the skirt with the ribbons provided a beautiful Christmas feel. Then I just added borders to the insert pictures and added a little drop shadow to give depth.
The last item I added was the Christmas message. By offsetting the two insert images, I found the perfect placement for the Christmas message.
Custom Photo Christmas card 2: Tarnished gold foil frames
This is my absolute favorite. In fact when I saw the actual printed card I wowed myself! Although originally designed for the front of the card, the client chose to use it on the inside. At 7"x10", the impact of the image on the inside is fantastic. She made a wise choice.
For this design, I wanted something contemporary yet elegant. I thought the gold accents on black would help me achieve that look. The design is actually quite simple. I use a varying opacity gold ribbon to connect the key images and a tarnished gold frame around the images.
Then I added the words "happy holidays" in a script font in various sizes and opacities to the background (barely noticeable) to give it a bit of a contemporary feel.
Choosing the images was also easy. Two small, tightly cropped face shots work great to add some smiles to accent the sibling picture in the middle where they weren't smiling.
Design 3: Expressions card
Although the sample image here doesn't fully show off the potential of this card it is a great design for a session where you get a lot of great expressions from the subjects - usually small kids. So now you don't have to choose just one expression, you can choose as many as you want. The size of the squares or rectangles can change to based on how many images you want on the front.
This also works great when you need to show off multiple kids. Here I alternated different pictures of each of the two girls. You could do the same with more kids and even add in Mom, Dad, and fido. Or, you could make a combo birth announcement and Christmas card by using 'kissable' images from a newborn session. By 'kissables' I mean toes, hands, head, etc.
In this design, I did not fill up every rectangle with a photo, however there's no reason why you couldn't do that. You could have a big center rectangle where the child is wearing a Santa hat. Or you could leave enough space between the rectangles to put a Christmas message between the rows of pictures.
I chose to put the message in the rectangles. Now you could put a full word or phrase in each rectangle or just one rectangle or you could mix it up like I did. In fact I not only mixed up the messages, I mixed up the font, the font size, the opacity, and the placement within the rectangle. However, even though you don't see "Merry Christmas" all at once, the brain makes the connection and gets the message. I chose to design it this way in order to break up the monotony of all images and make the overall look more interesting.
Another fun idea for the Christmas card is to put a short sentence about each child in a rectangle. You'll probably want to use bigger rectangles or squares in that case. But you could say something like "Johnny is learning to read at 5 years old" or "Mary has started piano lessons" or whatever it is they'd like to share.
Design 4: Simple card
I wanted to show this card because it's a nice simple design and works equally well with a green background and a black background. The image is cropped and framed with two pinstripes of a color from the baby's shirt. Then, using the same color for the font I vary the opacity of a Christmas message to create visual interest.
I chose a font that was slightly ornate but very readable. I didn't want a plain arial font because the card was already very simple. I wanted a more festive font. And, since the opacities of the two words were different, it was very easy to nestle one word right under the other and keep the message very readable.
If you don't like black background, this one can easily be change to a green that matches the green in the baby's shirt.
I hope if nothing else I've inspired some creative designs in you. If you're looking for help with some creative card designs for your studio, give me a call as I am available for contract work.
Next time we'll take a look at some white card designs from outdoor sessions. |
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Category : Christmas cards
| Posted By : Marcy |  Comments [6] |  Trackbacks [0] |
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| The URI to TrackBack this entry is :
http://portraitblog.mkartworks.com/trackback.php/23 | |
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By : Christina @ Time : 06 Dec 2006 05:10:56 pm : Email : |
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| What type of software do you use for the frames and ribbons? |
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By : Katy @ Time : 06 Dec 2006 05:38:49 pm : Email : |
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| What program are you using to do all this creative things? They are beautiful!!! And I love your tips ideas. |
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By : marcy @ Time : 07 Dec 2006 12:53:14 pm : Home |
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Thanks all, I hope I've inspired a few people.
I use photoshop for all card design and photo work. However I don't see why you can't do it in something like PaintshopPro.
Alot more designs, tutorials and downloads are coming soon so check back in a few weeks. |
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By : Mark @ Time : 02 Sep 2007 10:16:52 am : Email : |
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| I've been asked to help a well-known children's charity raise money by contributing through photography. My idea is to have 1 studio set-up and book out a Saturday of photo sessions with all profits going to the charity. With the Christmas holiday coming in less than 4 months, I thought it would be to everyone's advantage to do a Christmas Card set design. Do you have any recommendations what would work best with a wide-ranging general public? What backgrounds/props would serve best for an all day marathon? I'd appreciate your input. Thanks. |
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By : Glenda @ Time : 18 Nov 2007 03:48:14 pm : Email : |
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| I LOVE this card! I am so excited about doing this for my x-mas cards this year. I have chosen my pictures, but I can't figure out what size to use. I have three kids so want to use all 20 squares like you did, but I have been racking my brain for two hours trying to figure out the size pictures you used/what size card/paper. Please help. |
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By : marcy @ Time : 25 Nov 2007 01:42:48 pm : |
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Hi, I'm sorry I had computer problems and did not receive the comment notification. If you are still interested, let me know what software you are using and I will try to get a download up for you.
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