When I think of Christmas, some of the main things I personally think about are:
- Family
- Christmas tree and Decorations
- Christmas cards
- Gifts/ Wrapping paper
- Characters, E.g Santa, Snowmen, Reindeer
When I first read this competition my initial thoughts were to create a traditional wrapping paper. I wanted to focus on the characters of Christmas as they have been around for many years and have always been told about in stories to children, personally I think Christmas is all about family, but the little children in those families are what make it seem magical, when their faces light up, hearing that Santa has been, unwrapping presents.
This was the first example of wrapping paper I came across when researching that really stood out to me. Its so simplistic, the paper itself stands out because of the bright red used on the Santa character, but the actual design itself is very modern and with the market currently around. A lot of work, especially things like wrapping paper, are being produced with very simple digital images like this one. Though something like...
...is very traditional and old fashioned, the competition specifically says that the product has to appeal to a wide audience, this kind of design would most likely appeal to adults and older people. Even thought the design is bright and colourful which is appealing to the eyes and uses the traditional colours of Christmas, red, green and gold, I don't think this would appeal to children very much. I definitely want to produce something more like the first example.
I looked for a few more simplistic patterns/designs that caught my eye...
This example stood out to me because the colour palette is very limited, literally two colours. What also makes it simplistic is that they've just used the same snowflake in the repeat, they haven't incorporated different ones or anything which makes it a very easy design to produce, yet is still very effective. Because of the colours and the design, it could appeal to all age ranges. Its not focused to one specific age group.
Because I liked the idea of using characters as my main design, like Santa. I looked further into traditional wrapping paper and more modern wrapping paper focused around santa.
These three examples are of more traditional/old fashioned styles of wrapping paper with Santa on. Across all three the character designs are actually very similar. Looking through photos I've found this a lot with images, that Santa looked the same in versions drawn of him.
Illustration of Santa by Thomas Nast, January 1, 1881
As I wanted to go for a more traditional approach, something that crossed my mind was perhaps trying to bring back the old colour of Santa. Originally, Santa wore a bottle green coat not the red one we see everywhere today. Santa was first depicted wearing red by cartoonist Thomas Nast* in 1863. First colour adverts depicting the red suit were printed in Life magazine in 1923 for the White Rock water company. Coca-cola began using the red image in 1931. Santa Claus wore the green suit up to the 1950's, sometimes he even wore brown or white. His suit changed after Coca-Cola started running an add campaign using the fat man, and the artist Haddon Sundblom who painted him for this ad dressed him in red to match Coca-Cola's colour scheme.
Because Santa is such a big part of Christmas I want to focus mainly on him, if I have time I will try and incorporate more characters, like a snowman, but my aim is to complete a range of different designs for santa.
*Thomas Nast:
When Nast published a series of drawings of Santa Claus for Harper's weekly each year from 1863 to 1866, he helped create the kinder, more fatherly, plumper Santa we know today. His drawings show influences of the bearded, fur-cloacked, pipe-smoking Pelznickel of Nast's Palatinate homeland. Later colour illustrations by Nast are even closer to today's Santa Claus image, showing him as a toy maker.
Contributors to the Santa Image and Legend:
Washington Irving - 1812
Irving, under the name 'Diedrich Knickerbocker' publishes a revised edition of his satirical history of New York in which Santa 'rides over the tops of trees' in a horse-drawn wagon. He is described as a "jolly Dutchman" who smokes a clay pipe.
Clement Clarke Moore - 1822
Moore publishes his poem "A Visit from St.Nicholas" better known as "The Night Before Christmas." The poem is the first mention of a sleigh powered by "eight tiny reindeer" and mentioning their names. It describes Santa as jolly and rotund.
Thomas Nast - 1863
Harper's weekly publishes the first in a series of Nast's Santa illustration on January 3. One drawing shows Santa distributing gifts to Civil War soldiers from his sleigh.
Thomas Nast - 1866
Harper's weekly publishes the fourth and last instalment of Nast's Santa drawings now in colour (with Santa in red)
Thomas Nast - 1890
Nast publishes a book entitled "Christmas Drawings for All Mankind" with his latest Santa illustrations including Christmas symbols from around the world. Nast drew Santa walking on rooftops and going down chimneys.
Haddon Sundblom - 1931
Sundblom creates a series of Santa Claus ads for Coca-Cola. His Santa image is very close to Nast's, updating it with a slightly more modern look. The popular magazine and billboard ads help to standardise Santa's grandfatherly features.
Montgomery Ward's - 1939
As part of a Christmas ad campaign, Ward's introduces "Rudolph the red-Nosed Reindeer." The song of the same name eventually becomes a worldwide hit.
Nast's later 1890 colour version of Saint Nick.
More modern designs of Santa I looked at were:
Again these use very simplistic colours, a lot of red and white, which is what I'm thinking about using for my designs. The modern designs are very different to the traditional pieces of work. You can still tell the character is Santa however he no longer looks the same like the older version. There is a wider range of versions of Santa now as everyone pictures him differently and companies try to keep up to date and produce what they believe will sell, and unfortunately, brighter more digitalised work sells better than the traditional stuff because it appeals to children.
My designs for Santa:
I'm happy with the way my designs turned out, they are very digitalised, how ever i tried to keep to original costumes and shapes. I'm happier with my painted Santa though...
Because even though it is a more modern design/shape, the fact I painted it is a lot more traditional.
My Designs for Santa wrapping paper:
I took a lot of inspiration from my research with these, especially the red and white examples. I think they turned out really well for the fact I've never design or made wrapping paper before. I'm pleased with the results and had people actually asking me to make the paper because they would buy it.
Christmas Tree:
Because you can make a design that can be used for wrapping paper, as well as cards, I thought I would stay with the same simplistic theme. I came across these Christmas cards and I thought they were a great example of something simplistic but effective. The textures that have been used to create them really make them stand out of the crowd. Most traditional Christmas cards have nativity scenes or scenes of some kind, like a landscape with santa and his sleigh.
Christmas trees are a huge part of Christmas. These are something else I would like to look into for my designs.
The Christmas tree became more accepted and popular throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. Americans added more homemade and store bought ornaments, and began to prefer much larger trees that stood on the floor, moving away from the table top trees that were popular in Europe. President Franklin Pierce was the first to being a Christmas tree into the White House in 1856.
The first decorated tree was at Riga in Latvia, in 1510. In the early 16th century, Martin Luther is said to have decorated a small Christmas Tree with candles, to show his children how the starts twinkled through the dark night.
The decorations were Tinsels, silver wire ornaments, candles and small beads. All these had been manufactures in Germany and East Europe since 17th Century. The custom was to have several small trees on tables, one for each member of the family, with that persons gifts stacked on the table under the tree.
Tinsel was invented in Germany around 1610. At that time real silver was used, and machines were invented which pulled the silver out into the wafer thin strips for tinsel. Silver was durable, but tarnished quickly, especially with candlelight. Attempts were made to use a mixture of lead and tin, but this was heavy and tended to break under it own weight so was not so practical. Silver was used for tinsel right up to the mid-20th century.
In 1846, Queen Victoria and her German Prince, Albert, were illustrated in the Illustrated London News. They were standing with their children around a Christmas Tree. Unlike the pervious Royal family, Victoria was very popular with her subjects, and what was done at Court immediately became fashionable. Decorations were still of a 'home-made' variety. Young ladies spent hours at Christmas Crafts, quilling snowflakes and stars, sewing little pouches for secret girfts and paper baskets with sugared almonds in them. Small bead decorations, fine drawn out silver tinsel came from Germany together with beautiful Angels to sit at the top of the tree. Candles were often placed into wooden hoops for safety.
These are a few examples of Christmas Tree designs I came across with more of a traditional style to them:
First I looked at different wrapping paper. All the trees are decorated in a similar way and each paper uses similar colour palette too. You can tell by the style they are more old fashioned as nowadays you'll find that a lot of Christmas trees are made more of simple shapes and very digital.
Because I couldn't very many good examples of Christmas Tree wrapping paper, i looked into Christmas card designs focused around Christmas Trees. These are all very similar to each other as well. Just like the examples I gave for the Santa, when it came to Christmas everything seemed to be seen in the same way. Images/paintings were all done in a similar way. Where as now you get all different colours and shapes and sizes etc.
After looking in traditional styles I looked into more modern versions of the Christmas Tree. I seemed to be able to find more examples for this. Putting a Christmas Tree on wrapping paper/cards has obviously become a lot more popular over the years.
Over the years the Christmas Tree design seemed to have lots most of its detail. A lot of designs currently out there are just simple triangles layered on top of each other or just simply a triangle. Very digitalised and quite plain really. Even though it is a shame that this is the case, this type of design is more popular than the traditional, especially as you able to buy plastic Christmas Trees now, in all types of colours as well. The Christmas Tree has become very commercial.
These are some examples of 'modern' Christmas trees:
The first two are vinyl stickers you can buy to stick on your wall as a decoration or you actual Christmas Tree.
Personally I don't like the idea of these, they look pretty and decorative, but me and my family are very traditional when it comes to our Christmas Tree, we have a massive tree covered in red and gold baubles and hand made decorations.
My Designs for Christmas Trees:
Even though I have produced my trees digitally, I tried to keep to tree shapes and didn't keep them as triangles layered onto of each other. Personally the middle one is my favourite. The first design is definitely my least favourite, I think its more unrealistic than the others, a bit too simple and plain.
Other examples I looked at whilst doing my research:
This is another example of simplistic Christmas card. Holly is a very traditional part of Christmas but because this design has been made digitally, its made it a lot more modern and makes it a lot more appealing. I think it would still appeal more to an older age group, but this is because children tend to go for character cards rather than more traditional ones like this.
I find that the majority of snowman designs are very similar, there is only so much you can do to a snowman before it doesn't look like a snowman anymore. The man things that define a snowman are usually a carrot, coal buttons and a hat and scarf. I want to design my own snowman character but it is very hard to get away from the typical snowman, so you just have to make it your own in some way, whether its the style or what he's wearing etc.
No comments:
Post a Comment