Christmas Card 2009, Or What I Did On My Thanksgiving Vacation

For this year's custom-made Christmas card I had a novel idea: instead of waiting until the very last minute to begin working on it like I always do, I would actually get a head start on it! No more racing against the clock and mailing it out a day or two before Christmas. What an unorthodox concept.

My original intention was to make a simple card that looked like the cover of a Little Golden Book. But as I was sketching out ideas I started thinking of an actual story for the inside. Before I knew it my little card had evolved into a full blown eight page book.

I had a week long vacation at the beginning of November. I couldn't afford to go anywhere, so I spent almost the entire week in front of my computer working on this card/book. It turned out pretty much the way I pictured it in my mind. It was nice to have it done ahead of time for once.

Here are all the pages in order:

If you look closely you'll see I took advantage of Photoshop and reused certain elements to make my life easier. Page 5 is obviously the same as the cover, with a few tweaks here and there. The fighter jets and helicopter are reused throughout. The little girl on page 6 was reworked a bit for use on page 7. The red gift box is the exact same piece of art every time it appears as well. The cars and panicked citizens were reused here and there too. Is this cheating? Nah. I'm working smart!

The end papers and back cover feature many special guest stars from my Flickr stream.

Everything was drawn in Photoshop on the graphic tablet, then assembled in InDesign.

Now the only problem is what the heck am I going to do for next year?