DESCRIPTION Maddison Graphic Christmas Card CLIENT Maddison Graphic DATE December 2009 DESIGN CREDITS Maddison Graphic PRINT CREDITS IST Printing TYPE CREDITS Akkurat by Laurenz Brunner

QUANTITY PRODUCED 400 PRODUCTION COST £511.75 (US$802.85) PRODUCTION TIME 5 days DIMENSIONS: WIDTH × HEIGHT × DEPTH 148 mm × 210 mm × 2 mm (5.82 in × 8.26 in × 0.07 in) PRINT METHOD Letterpress PAPER STOCK 2000 micron gfsmith nomad greyboard NUMBER OF COLORS 2 spot inks

There is a vast amount of holiday cards out there, and many found their way to our office here at FPO, which is why we are still talking about them two months later. In this case, an idea had to be scaled down at the estimate level, which proved to be the perfect bit of bad news, as the final result was even better than the original intention.

We wanted to produce something for clients, and friends, that served as both a Christmas card and an opportunity to announce our new website. The initial idea was to evoke Fair Isle/Scandinavian knitwear patterns but using web icons rather than the traditional snowflakes and reindeer. The pattern would fill the whole card and would be in four different “tasteful” colours. We optimistically sent the design for a quote but soon discovered that it would fall well outside our budget.

The problem was that the plate size as intended (A5) would be too large for our printer’s preferred press and that it would be necessary to shrink the design to A6. At A6 the illusion of the knitting pattern was lost because of the dominant border. Foil blocking requires a separate plate for each colour and this proved too expensive. So we decided to go for the black and white tree that you see here on A5… When the card came back from the printer it was evident that the tree was a much stronger solution and more festive than our initial overall knitting pattern. Budgetary limitations had actually led to a better design.

So there you have it folks, when your client (or your own budget) says no to your expensive idea, this card proves that a smaller budget can go a long way.