Carmel Type Co. and Calligritype were hosting a contest in November of 2015. The rules of the contest were to create a piece of lettering using your favorite holiday phrase. Creative freedom was left to each contestant.
I saw this as an opportunity to not only create a new piece of lettering, but to make Christmas cards that I could give away to family and friends.
Since this became a multi-purpose project, I had to approach it differently than if it had only one objective. It needed to be a holiday phrase, but it also needed to work as the front to a card. Because of this, I chose to work with a short and simple phrase; “Season’s Greetings.” I could have gone with “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays”, but these felt overused and “Season’s Greetings” has a bit more character to it.
I wanted the lettering to be lighthearted and fun. I looked at some examples of lettering styles from the 40’s and 50’s and decided to utilize both a script and a serif face.
The script was crafted at an upright position to make it less formal. I alternated the sizes of each letter to add to the playfulness of the lettering. Neither word was drawn on a flat baseline. Each letter has a slight bounce in it that keeps any of the letterforms from aligning with one another. I made sure to keep this ‘unbalance’ minimal so they didn’t feel too crazy; just enough to keep the messaging positive and carefree.
Once the basic composition of my lettering was established, I moved forward with adding weight to the letterforms and adjusting the space. After the piece felt like it was ready for one final refinement round, I traced it over in pencil and made a tight drawing. I then inked it and scanned it onto the computer.
I decided to keep the printing simple and do it myself. I went out to find a pack of colored paper stock. The pack contained the classic red and green you would normally find around Christmas time, but it also included a lighter green, silver, and brown.
The paper had a matte finish and was thick enough to mimic a professional card, but not too thick that it couldn’t be printed on by the average desktop printer.
