• PROJECTS
• HOLIDAY CARDS
• MOTHER'S DAY CARDS
• AROUND THE WORLD

Back to previous themes for 2007, I wanted to merge my infographic interests with the functionality of calendars. Borrowing from designs submitted to eliazar's calendar design contest, I designed a 12-month calendar designed to fit on a standard business card, presented a printable version as well as a desktop wallpaper version.

This year is all about Web 2.0 and the wisdom of crowds – rather then creating a card based on my own research, I decided to allow people to determine for themselves what is most relevant, and to share that with the community at large. I bit off a bit more than I could chew technology wise, but fortunately Kyung Ahn and Scott Susslin came to the rescue and helped me with the PHP and MySQL.

Looking to move further away from the quantitative side of the holidays, my fifth holiday card includes only illustrations of holiday themes. A series of three desktop patterns available in a variety of different sizes provided me a bit more opportunity for creative exploration than some of my previous exercises.

I suspect that I was inspired by my recent project work in the food and beverage sector, but I determined for 2005 to take a slightly different approach to the holidays. This is the first year I did not include any sort of date messaging in my holiday card. Instead I designed a basic calculator application for estimating the fat and calories in holiday meals. The calculator is based in PHP, and takes into account most of the traditional holiday season foods.

For 2003 I started to look at other numbers that come into play around the holidays. Although the dates of holidays are still included, I chose to focus on the facts and figures. Consulting the U.S. Census Bureau, sites concerning retail statistics, and a few other sources, I put together a list of interesting facts that surround the holidays. I utilized CSS and type styling as a primary design element and part of the illustration.

The second of my holiday cards extended the calendar theme by orienting the months in a circle around the display area of the site. I also extended the holidays that I include to cover the more obscure, such as National Pie Day. Descriptions were provided for each listed holiday, adding more interest and longevity to the site.

The first of the seasonal holiday cards I create annually to share with friends, family, co-workers, and business associates. It also begins a tradition that I followed for a few years of focusing my designs around the numbers and dates are related to the holidays. I experimented with displaying the days of the month in a different configuration than the standard 7-day week by centering on the weekends, and relating them to the seasonal holidays. This is also the last time I utilized a traditional 3-D application a part of the design process.