Christmas Card Winning Scholarship Design Turns from Doodle to Dazzling! An Inside Look at the Process – Part 1

How exactly do we take the simple line drawing submitted by Lauren Ondreko, winner of our 3rd annual Create-A-Greeting-Card $10,000 Scholarship contest, and turn it into a potential best seller in our Christmas cards line? You are about to get a rare glimpse inside the process of how a leading publisher of business Christmas cards (yes, that would be us) works some holiday magic!

The contest was a very exciting one this year; with so many talented student artists and photographers submitting their work, the decision was a difficult one. After much deliberation, we finally chose the design submitted by Lauren Ondreko from Friendswood High School in Friendswood, Texas.

Lauren’s artwork, a beautiful line drawing filled with symbols of the holiday season, turned out to prove a somewhat controversial choice as our winner of the $10,000 prize. It was a truly fine piece of art that just so happened to be submitted on a sheet of loose leaf paper! The submission style of the art work caused a bit of a stir, but in the end it was the design that won, and not the medium on which it was received.

Here at the Gallery Collection there is a wonderful creative team who, year after year, successfully turns out some of the most beautiful and original Christmas cards in the greeting cards market today. So just what did they do to this winning doodle to make it into one of our holiday cards that people everywhere will want to purchase?

It all started with the design itself. The original design received a Hi-Res scanning into our system. Once the image had been scanned, it was cleaned up with a graphics program. This takes all of the fine line work and makes it smooth and neat for reproduction.

Here is the original artwork submitted by Lauren for the scholarship contest.

This is what Lauren’s drawing looked like after it had been scanned into the system, but before the image had been cleaned up.

The artwork cleaning process is an important one. Sharpening the image makes the art suitable for reproduction, which in turn makes a beautiful holiday card. Without this process the image could appear rough or blurry, and would be unfit for use. Once the image had been properly taken care of the production person, or Imager, got to work their own magic on the design!

The next step of the process will follow the design as it moved through the Imager’s hands. Lauren’s art was ready to begin the creative journey of colors, spacing, and everything else that would make it the dazzling Christmas card it was destined to become. Stay tuned for Part 2 and Part 3, where we will give you the inside scoop on just how that happened!