Making Christmas Cards- Riso Mini Project

When I planned out my projects for the year I knew I wanted to allocate a mini project to using the risograph printer. The riso is something I've loved working with over the past two years and it's amazing having unlimited access to it since there are only a handful of these printers in the North East. With this, I set aside the last week before Christmas to make some Christmas cards for family and friends. This was a chance to work on something personal and try alternate designs that didn't have to link with project work. It was also great to use the new colours such as gold which have just been delivered- great timing! 

As much as I've used the riso many times this year for my Industrial landscape book and other projects, it's always a different experience learning more about how the colours layer and the type of artwork that works best. 

I had some elf drawings that I'd done over the past few weeks and thought they would be good as the basis for a design. I started by drawing out the composition then figuring out how many colours I wanted. By lowering the opacity of the linework, I could use layers to organise the 3 different colours, one for linework and two others to fill the character. I also played around with different opacities in greyscale so the colours were less harsh. Using raw colours such as red and fluorescent pink can be quite jarring and lose the character so by reducing the background colour to 75%, it allows the linework to stand out and makes for a more harmonious composition. 

Greyscale layers separated into 3 colours

A digital mock-up using the gradient map and multiply tools on Photoshop

Here are the final outcomes. I ended up having too much fun with the colours so I decided to do some traditional colour schemes with red, green and gold, then a more contemporary approach with teal and fluorescent pink. I love the effect of the dot process. The added grain adds more texture and breaks up the colours which remind me of old vintage cards. Before working on this I found some images on Pinterest that I loved and took inspiration from. Their simplicity show how effective traditionally produced branding can be, these Prague and Poland zoo promotional posters, for example. 

These posters were designed by Jane McDevitt, a web designer based in Glasgow. Her designs are inspired by a love for ephemera and Eastern European design. 

References-

Flickr. 2021. Jane McDevitt. [online] Available at: <https://www.flickr.com/photos/maraid/> [Accessed 21 December 2021].

YUK FUN BLOG. 2021. Creative We Love: Jane McDevitt - YUK FUN BLOG. [online] Available at: <https://www.yukfun.co.uk/inspiration/creative-we-love-jane-mcdevitt/> [Accessed 21 December 2021].

Matchboxes, C., 2020. Chapter 51: A History of Matchboxes. [online] Guity-novin.blogspot.com. Available at: <http://guity-novin.blogspot.com/2012/02/chapter-51-history-of-matchboxes.html> [Accessed 4 February 2022].