More Christmas Cards

Two young children. They give a lot of joy, but also require considerable amounts of your time. Time not available anymore for other fun activities, such as creating new graphic designs and applications. Luckily, I was still able to find tiny bits of it during the past years to at least keep the Cristmas Card tradition alive. As a result, two more cards have been added to the list.

The first one (from 2023) depicts a large Christmas tree, made up from many tiny randomized circlikes in the Christmas colors red and green. Randomization of the circlikes is applied to their position, size, circlikeness, and color. The card is printed in full colour on white glossy paper.

The second one (from 2024) focusses on a transition theme, using a checkerboard design in the background. From left to right, Christmas stars and Christmas trees are gradually transitioning into each other. Due to the checkerboard, an inattentive viewer might even not notice this. You really need to take closer look to see what’s happening. The card is printed with black ink on metallic gold paper.

Christmas cards

Due to other time-consuming activities, such as becoming a house owner, moving into a new house, and my daughter being born, some news post have been delayed a bit. As a result, this news post is not about one, but about two Christmas cards!

Last year’s card displayed a randomized collection of dancing candles. To ensure that all candles are unique, randomization is applied to the width of the candles, the color of the flames, and the horizontal mirroring of the candles. The dancing look is realized by randomizing the vertical and horizontal positions of the candles.

This year’s card is a combination of several designs that I have made in the past: many falling circlikulair snowflakes, above a landscape of wavy snow hills, with a bright sparkling star (or exploding firework) in the sky. All printed in white ink on brown kraft paper.

Birth announcement card

Hurray! A few weeks ago, our daughter Elin was born. We wanted the design of her birth announcement card to reflect her name, and also to connect with the card we designed for our son Kai. To us, the most appealing meanings of the name Elin go in the directions of sparkling, pretty, and a waterfall. Our design focusses on a collection of bright shining stars.

After experimenting with paper and ink colors, we decided to use white and random tints of purple printed on dark green paper for the front side of the card, and random tints of purple and green printed on white paper for the back side. Again, we made eight different versions of the card, fitting neatly on A3+ sized paper.

Kitchen bubbles

For the backsplash of the kitchen in their new house, my brother and his girlfriend asked me to make a design based on bubbles and the colors green and grey. After trying several design options and playing around with the bubble size and the behaviour around the edges, we decided to go for a design with several transitions taking place from bottom to top: smaller bubbles, less bubbles, lighter colors, and more irregularity in the bubble shapes and positions. It is printed on the back of a 270 by 60 cm glass plate, and reflects very nicely in the induction cooking plate.

Circular squares sweater

The desire to make a new self-designed sweater, in combination with inspiration from a pair of socks I got last Christmas (designed by Thijs Verhaar) and from one of my previous designs, resulted into this awesome sweater. The design runs endlessly around your body. When you stretch your armes to the sides, the design transitions from your one hand and arm, over your body, to your other arm and hand.