As the holiday season is well behind us, it’s time for me to look back on it and take notes for the next holiday season, with this year’s planning to commence in the summer.

The Dunkirk Card

Once again I worked with the creative director of Blue Bag Horse to create the Dunkirk Systems, LLC card. As I work with a select few graphic designers, I always thought it nice for them to receive a card they did not design themselves. Also, I am lucky to be working with Blue Bag Horse in any form, so the card is it. When I sat down with them, the only “theme” I could only think of one theme – reindeer. This most likely came from my trip to Finland for Nokia OpenLab and reindeer are big there, both for Christmas decorations and for dinner. As a result here is the design of the front of the card.

They came up with a clever snowflake design comprised of reindeer.

I decided once again to make a charitable donation in lieu of gifts to clients, partners and friends, and this year’s recipient was YouthBuild Boston, a pro-bono client of mine and a great organization that teaches kids real skills in construction, as well as providing them and the community with a stronger foundation. I was proud to feature them and their logo on the back of the card as shown:

Visit YouthBuild Boston’s Web site for more information on this great organization.

It’s better to give than to receive

As for the numbers, I sent out nearly 100 cards, and 2 were returned with bad addresses. I am tracking these people down now. How many did I receive? 7, as in seven.

This number does not include e-cards, for which I probably received a dozen but I didn’t count them specifically, or print out anything. I cherished and hung up the cards I did receive with care. But I cannot say those who didn’t send cards are not nice people! Some people don’t send physical cards – they are not necessarily cheap or environmentally friendly – and in a down economy people may be cutting back to only the essentials. And some people don’t deal with physical, paper cards and prefer to send email or e-cards.

But I did not send cards just to receive them. And I do believe in personal notes and cards to people. In this age of getting bombarded with email and other messages over the Internet, it is nice to get something tangible that you can hold in your hand, and surely stands out from the crowd.

Looking ahead

So what to do for 2009? One of the challenges with sending physical cards is getting a physical address to send them to! Many people do not have their address on their business cards or Web site, and some investigative work and queries were required. I may expand beyond paper cards with an e-card or some holiday greeting online. But as it stands now, I am not planning on abandoning sending hand-personalized, paper holiday greeting cards.

What are your plans? Feel free to share your thoughts by commenting to this post.

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