This stage was a little trickier than I anticipated, I knew I had software that would allow me to produce greeting cards for print but I didn’t really know how best to use it. I ended up opting for Indesign as I had a little understanding of how it worked and thought the format might be a bit more logical. I looked around online for some advice on greeting card design and found a few helpful sites.

I then set about designing the templates for the card and placing the illustrator files into the boxes created. After a little bit of adjusting I had a card ready for print here’s how it looked:

Card 3 ready for printing

I then set about trying to print off the card. This was the bit that got confusing for me. I initially tried printing onto A4 thinking I’d cut the paper down later, but found it confusing to get the inside part of the card in the right place. After a few wrong attempts I decided to cut the paper down so that it was A5 size prior to printing, and to set my printer to print from that size. This was much easier! I tried it in black and white just to see how it worked, here’s how it turned out:

Outside of trial card

Inside of trial card

You’ll notice the images now have borders – this wasn’t an initial part of my design in Illustrator but my printer doesn’t do border-less printing so I created some small borders in Indesign to allow for this.

A couple of things need adjusting on the second card design, in the photo below you’ll see the banner on the inside of the card was slightly cropped in printing, so I moved the image so the banner wasn’t being cropped:

I printed the finished cards onto thin cream coloured card as this seemed to suit the colours of the designs and bring a unifying factor to all the cards. I think it looks a little warmer, maybe even a bit more professional on the cream coloured card instead of white. It would’ve been nice to try on different cards, but this was what we had/could afford.

The three completed cards

The envelopes for the cards are simple white paper based, suitable for A5 cards. Again this is due to them being the envelopes we had, if I have time/money I’ll look for some cream envelopes to go with the cards, to help complete the look. I chose not to devote any real thought/time to designs on the envelope as I felt this would detract from me getting the main thing sorted (i.e. the 3 card designs). If I’d felt more confident/practiced using Illustrator and Indesign (and therefore able to produce the card designs faster) I would’ve given myself some time to consider more interesting envelope designs.

Overall I’m fairly pleased with how the cards turned out.

The design of the third card was much easier than the previous too, simply because I took elements of the first card and simplified them to make a different design. This might sound like cheating but I think it’s fine given that the cards are in a range around the theme of weight loss/ weight gain and it would give a customer a bit more choice.

So here’s the design of the third card, front and inside:

Front of Card 3

Inside of Card 3

For the front of the card I’ve allowed the pie pattern to take center stage as I think alone it still feels light hearted and doesn’t make me think that the card has a derogatory message. I changed the size and colour of the text on the banner just to sit better with the colours coming from the pies. I asked my husband what he thought when he came home from work and he agreed that it was simple but worked well, and that it was nice to see the pattern with a character in front of it.

The inside of the card is the same as the design for card one, simply because it worked well so I saw no real need to change it, I think the front of the card is what will attract people to the card.

Champion/Podium Inspiration

I had the idea of incorporating a podium for a character to stand on to emphasis the phrase ‘weight loss champion’. But I needed a reminder of how a podium looked and how people looked standing on one to help me to draw my character. Below are my initial drawings in a sketchbook.

First two sketches of champion character

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Below I’ve started with a copy of how the first card looked and then how I’ve changed it to finish it:

‘Who ate all the Pies v2’

Final Version

I didn’t change too much just adjusted some colours adding in some pink for the cheeks, and including a grey outline around the face and legs just to add some definition. I also changed the colour of the text to seem less accusatory/negative, the red looked more like a threat, so the purple/red is a bit more warming.

I also worked on the inside of the card, I wanted to keep it simple, but complete the idea started on the front. I think I achieved this by using the same banner and writing and completing the sentence. The little piece of pie in the corner is just a fun touch.

Inside of Card v1

Inside of card v2 (final)

I think the text on the inside of the card helps the reader realize the card is celebrating the persons weight gain as an landmark in their life, rather than making fun of the person. It’s a thin line between being an insult and a compliment so I hope overall I’ve got it on the compliment side! I also think the banners help add some movement and colour as well as a visual link to the design on the front (which works well).