The history of cards
https://northerncards.com/blogs/nc/the-history-of-the-greeting-card
Paragraph 1: the origins of greetings cards
This dates back to ancient times, with the ancient Egyptians and Chinese likely the first people to send and use greeting cards for talking to others. However, these two civilizations never properly used greeting cards; instead, they used papyrus scrolls to write (Egyptians) or exchange goodwill messages during a celebrated new year (Chinese).
Paragraph 2: history of printed greeting cards (15th century)
Fast-forwarding to the 15th century (the 1400s-1490s), the next record of cards was confirmed to have been made/originated from Germany. It is also said that inventor and craftsman Johannes Gutenberg was credited for printing the first-ever European greeting cards between 1400-1450. Those printed cards were famously made using woodcuts, which are techniques in printmaking that use tools like knives that can carve a card's design into a completed wood-block surface, and those cards were also used as delivered New Year's greetings.
Typographic efforts on Adobe Photoshop
My Canva mood-board practice for my Christmas card design
My pen and paper sketch of my planned Christmas card
Adobe Illustrator Christmas and Ash Wednesday/Lent greeting cards (first one based on my drawn sketch above)
Christmas card: (created on Friday 15/11/2024)
Finished front cover of my chosen card design (Adobe Photoshop) Date created: Tuesday 19/11/2024
It's like the original, but with added black tracings (e.g., the Merry Christmas title) and the tree being a bit taller than Santa.
Final new and improved version of my Christmas card design (Adobe Photoshop) Date created: Wednesday 27/11/2024
Changes made to my Christmas Card: (also mentioned in my feedback)
The only changes I made to slightly improve my final design were to make my Christmas tree taller and make Santa more child-friendly because of the plain, dark black eyes.
The feedback I was given about my previous completed design: (date of feedback - Tuesday 26/11/2024)
Things to improve/the weakest parts of my past creation:
- The size of the Christmas tree (by making it taller and less flat)
- Santa Clause's black eyes (by adding a bit of white to make him more friendly)
Other than that, my other pieces of feedback were mostly positive and listed everything else as not worthy of making a change (e.g., the bold/font of my Merry Xmas title).
Card design evaluation (written as of 27/11/2024)
For my greeting card project, I was given the task of …?
I want to be able to create and design a simple holiday concept card using computing software like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator for the college business sales coming up this year in December.
Out of all the research I completed, the part I found the most useful was …?
I had the chance to do some further research on the day I went on a class trip to Card Factory on Broadway (Tuesday, 12/11/2024) on typefaces and specific holiday card designs (e.g., Christmas designs).
A few design ideas that I managed to find throughout my research on this project are a primary setting (an icy island) for where my chosen design will be based (Christmas), what Christmas trees should have (e.g., a star on the top) and colours that are most associated with Christmas (e.g., red and green - used in my Merry Xmas title).
Looking at the final piece, I feel …?
Everything especially my positive and constructive feedback made my good Christmas card design into a product that I felt was perfect for selling.
The parts of my Christmas card design that I liked the most were the red and green accurately traced title and my final completed Santa Clause design with the white added to the eyes and a bit to the mouth.
Some areas of my final piece that I feel like I could have done differently was adding a bit more background to my stranded island and snowflakes (e.g., clouds for the snowflakes and more decorations to my tree's design).
Finally, no there was not much else I wanted to create for my card but didn't know how to because I had ideas on what would be good for a card and the drawings would not have been too difficult in my opinion.
The feedback I received about the final piece was …?
Mostly positive and constructive and the students who gave me feedback felt inspired by my completed designed Christmas card at the end.
The students also gave me some good fascinating points about my card. Those fascinating points include the height of my Santa and tree being exactly the same (and made the tree taller at the end), the age rating of my card being most likely for children around the age of 10, and communicating with me about Santa's eyes being fully black and the fact that I usually draw my people with full black eyes and if I was to make this tree suitable for roughly 10-year old children, I would have to add a bit of white to Santa's eyes and mouth to make him more family-friendly (which is what I did on my final piece).
The most important piece of feedback was …?
The size of my art-designed Christmas tree showing the same height as my Santa character. The reason why I found it the most important/useful piece of feedback is because it is quite clear that most Christmas trees have higher heights than the real Santa from the North Pole (e.g., the spirit of DeSoto in Louisiana, United States, and the gifted tree around Trafalgar Square in London by Norway as a thank you present).
The part I enjoyed the least about this project was …?
The main part of this whole project that I disliked the most was the part where I had to transfer my Adobe Illustrator work to Adobe Photoshop for some extra drawing textures (e.g., charcoal pens). The reason why it was my least favorite part of the project is because of my lack of interest and knowledge in Photoshop but in the end, it wasn't that bad from my perspective.
Looking over this whole project, the most important skill I've learned is …?
(Also answered in the last question), using more of Adobe Photoshop's making tools as I prefer to use either InDesign or Illustrator for most of my coursework. As for if I tried to use anything new throughout the project which I have never done before, yes, I did try something new and that was the Photoshop exclusive drawing pens with their different pattern linings and types of drawing utensils.
The main part of my project that I was the proudest of during the process of working on it was the icy, watery, snowy setting used for my card's front background which had snowflakes, a stranded island of ice, and water around the island (and in my eyes, underneath the island as well),
Looking forward, the one skill I've enjoyed using that I will carry into future projects is …?
The access to the different Photoshop pens that are good for tracing lines and adding a bit more extra black to a drawing if it needs more. However, I have no idea what the next few Adobe software projects are yet at the moment but I am sure that I will use a lot more Photoshop throughout my time during my Media studies.
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