The following is a breakdown of my process in creating my 2011 Christmas Card / Music mixtape.

There are two halves that make my Christmas mixtape- the first of which is the music and always the one to start on.

THE MUSIC

Putting the playlist together usually starts around the end of August. I aim to take all of the selected tracks from albums that have had particular airply during the year, which gives me a slightly easier place to start from. Four different drafts and variations on the playlist were made up until mid-November, which is really just me being anal and fiddling about with track flow, pace, genre diversity etc.

THE NAME

Hopefully by the time the playlist is done it has a certain characteristic or feel to it. This year lots of the tracks were under or around the three minute mark, and the mix in it’s entirety was only 35 minutes - hence ‘Songs For Short But Sweet’.
(Every mix is ‘Songs For/To…’ eg. 2010:’Songs For Driving Home’ 2009: ‘Songs To Keep You Warm’).

THE SECOND HALF… is the design of the packaging and artwork. I make 16 physical copies to give out and the rest are distributed digitally.

THE COVER

I set myself the parameter of creating something typographically. Previous years’ cards have had purely imaged based artwork, and I was keen to play around with some typography and potentially create my own rather than just choose some nice typefaces. After sketching through a lot of A4 sheets I settled on the design that sits as the main image of this post.

THE TYPE DESIGN

The type had to be very structural and tall so that the more ornate type would stand out more. It was great to design type for the first time, and the simplistic characteristics needed did me a lot of favours. I drew out a basic 4x4 rectangular grid in Illustrator and laid out the letters accordingly until I had all my words.

THE HAND RENDERED TYPE

I was keen to use a slightly more decorative, ornate, art deco style of type for the ‘Short’ to contrast against the very structural and functional look of the other letters. After a lot of playing around I decided actually the type would look a lot more ornate if kept to a simple serif with a detailed background etching.

The type was then scanned and cleaned up a bit in Photoshop, and combined with the digital type.

THE PACKAGING

In previous years I’ve produced more of a card that also happens to have a CD in it. This year was a bit different. Since moving out to Paris in August I’m in a smaller studio - and haven’t managed to get all my printing/production setup (not as exciting as it sounds) unpacked. The solution was to create packaging that could be made from one A4 sheet of paper. All I then had to do was to choose my paper stock and lay out the artwork so that I could simply print it, fold it, and attach the CD.

Once the playlist was completed the artwork and packaging process took place over two days. 16 copies were made and have now been sent off to friends.

Download the digital copy of Songs For Short But Sweet HERE.