DESCRIPTION Kismet Holiday Card CLIENT Self-promotion DATE December 2009 DESIGN CREDITS Carrie Hamilton, Kismet Design Studio PRINT CREDITS Prototope TYPE CREDITS Umbra (manipulated) Hoefler Text Swash Italic Futura

QUANTITY PRODUCED 50 PRODUCTION TIME 3 – 5 Days DIMENSIONS: WIDTH × HEIGHT × DEPTH 5 in × 7 in PRINT METHOD Laser-cutting PAPER STOCK Strathmore Bristol Vellum (sold in pads as an art paper) NUMBER OF COLORS Zero

By mid-January there can be a moment of Holiday-Card-Graphic-Cleverness Fatigue induced by the abundance of graphic designers who take this time to produce something beautiful and/or clever. And it’s almost February and we still have a handful or less of holiday cards to publish here on FPO. But why stop when you have beauties like this that not only is visually clever but also is cleverly produced? I first saw Carrie Hamilton’s Holiday card on Felt & Wire and I immediately asked Carrie to also show her project here. At Felt & Wire she offered some insight into how the card came to be.

The theme for my studio’s holiday cards is usually the date of the coming year. It’s culturally inclusive, and because it consists of a maximum of four characters, it allows me to explore a wide range of typographic solutions. 2010 in roman numerals translates to MMX, a configuration of characters so sexy, it practically designs itself.

While jotting down the phrase on my to-do list, “MMX for XMAS,” I noted that the MX could be cut out of a surface and made to read as XM when flipped over, thus creating a dual-purpose greeting. The idea seemed straightforward enough, but the execution was a mystery. I couldn’t justify the expense of die cutting for a self-promotional piece with such a limited life.

The intensity of the laser can be adjusted to allow for etching — that is, when the laser cuts into the surface of the paper but does not penetrate all the way through — or engraving, when the laser passes back and forth over the material to render a solid form.

The effect is stunning and the idea so jealousy-inducing. Plus, it didn’t break the bank.

Best of all, laser cutting is priced according to the time it takes for the laser to cut the design into the paper, and some laser cutting services require no minimum order. It’s an ideal medium when you want to produce something truly special in a short run.

Photographs by Joe McGrath