Monday, November 22, 2010

Company Holiday Card


Photograph by Khaliq Sharpe

Even though it wasn't within my job description, I was asked to design a company Christmas Card.  I chose a complex, uninteresting site photograph with a group of men working.  Using photoshop I "painted" santa-style hats on the men, and falling "snow" on the rest of the image.

The punchline came inside the card, "Not all elves build toys."

This card won me a backpack.

It turns out, our insurance company, which insures more than just general contractors, holds an annual holiday luncheon during which they display all the cards they receive in December.  The employees then vote and award a prize for the one that celebrates the holiday season and best exemplifies the work of the submitting company.



Card Interior



Lego Business Card Holder

The NYU job fair was an education in marketing give-aways for me.  I didn't expect the TP to be something people would want to take home with them.  In fact some even asked for bags - too embarassed to be carrying around a roll of TP.  This served as the basis for the next give-away.

Lego, the popular toymaker created software called Lego Digital Designer - in essence AutoCAD for Lego models.  Users are allowed to select individual Lego bricks and position them in space to construct a model.  As it's created, the program keeps a running total of the cost of the model.  Upon completion, the program uploads the model to the Lego website which sends you a bill for the bricks, and a week later, a package arrives in the mail with exactly the pieces needed to build the model.  This program would have been a dream to my 10 year-old self.

The cost of the business card holder was $7.33.  We bought small plastic tube-like containers to hold the pieces of the set, and created our own Lego-style pictures-only instructions for assembling the piece.  In addition a company business card was included in the package.

In order to customize it, we had stickers created that fit on a key block on the front, and the mini-figure's torso.  The goal was to make it look as though he was wearing a company t-shirt.

In all, 150 of them were created, and were only used once, given away at a charity event at the Lake Mahopac Country Club in 2008.

It should be noted that Lego does not in anyway endorse this.
The packaging, the pieces, and the completed model.