Creative Process: Holiday Calendar

I thought it might be interesting or perhaps even helpful to talk about the creative process… what I’m thinking as I create graphics. So once in a while I will put up a post not focusing on the actual mechanics of how to use software, but on my thinking as I make a project.

I was asked to put together a slide for a holiday calendar announcement. It just had to have the title “Holiday Calendar” on it as the rest of the announcement would either be written or verbalized.

First, I went to Think Stock Photos, where we have a subscription, to find an appropriate graphic. I did a search for “calendar” first, then for “holiday calendar.” This one seemed like a good one to work with.

It was more of a square format, though, and I needed a 4:3 format. I first cropped it down to the correct dimensions.

As I looked at the picture, it seemed like it needed another  Christmas ornament because it wasn’t really obvious at first that all the other items in the picture were Christmas-related. Notice I chopped off the “Today Is,” but that was because I knew I would replace those words with “December.” And then I needed to put the title in. Time to get started!

First I used the rubber stamp tool to stamp away the “Today Is” so that it looked like a solid black.

I searched for a red Christmas ornament and found this.

Using the magic wand tool, I cut out the ornament and pasted it into the file I was working on.

Oops, a little too big! Rats, there was a slight chunk taken out of the left side too. Oh well. Once shrunk down, no one would notice.

I resized and rotated the ornament and put it in the upper left corner. I also rubber stamped away the “Friday” word.

Adding a shadow under the ornament made it look more like it belonged there. I also added the word “December” on top. the color of the text is a slight pinkish-white, like the rest of the white in the picture.

Then I added the title. All the fonts are Helvetica, to match the original calendar. This brings consistency to the photograph and makes the words look like they were part of the original photo.