Flower card collaboration

I was commissioned to create some new designs for online florists flower card. I've written about this briefly on my socials in the past, but here, I wanted to write about that partnership and my process in a little bit more detail.

The Brief

As you can see from the photo above, flower card create beautiful minature fresh flower bouquets, which nestle inside a free standing, personalised card. It's a lovely combination of sending a thoughtful greetings card and fresh flowers, combined. I was tasked with producing some new designs for the side and bottom corner of some cards. The company wanted to expand their product offering with a new range of cards: 'thinking of you'.

Considerations

The nature of the product meant I had a tall, slightly L shaped space in which to work. It was important not to encroach too much on the base area underneath the flower 'window', as this is where the personalised message sits. I was advised that some clients write a long message, up to the maximum character count, while for others, it's just a few words. My designs needed to fill the space enough that short messages didn't look too empty, while not spilling over and covering longer messages.

In addition, I knew that in this case, it is the flowers that are the star of the show, not actually the card design at all. Unlike most greetings card design, the main focus needed to be not the drawing on the cards, but the words and the bouquet itself. So I knew my designs needed to complement and not detract focus from the blooms. I decided early on, that I would stick to organic forms and botanical subjects and that I would avoid my usual lino print style for these designs, as I felt it might be too stylised and distracting. Early on, I decided watercolour would be my medium of choice for this commission, as it canbe a little more understated.

I also needed to consider the needs of both the customer, and the recipient of this range of cards. 'Thinking of you' cards can cover a range of circumstances but are often sent during difficult times, such as during illness, following accidents, or for a bereavement. The sender wants the recipient to know they are in their thoughts, even though they can't be there in person. The recipient draws comfort from this, and hopefully feels a little less alone. The cards needed to be soft, warm, tasteful, and perhaps, just a little symbolic of nature taking it's course.

The process

After some discussion with flower card about the brief and considerations, I began by brain-storming a list of possible subjects. I wanted to use a range of botanical subjects and different colour palettes, for customers to choose from. Usually when I design a product range or a collection, I stick to one established colour palette, of between around 6-10 colours, for all of the products in the collection, to create a sense of cohesion. Here, as the final pieces would not be seen together I decided to treat each card as it's own entity, and use a different palette for each card, as the design dictated.

I began, as I always do, by gathering visual information, drawing and photographing a range of suitable plant life. It was spring, which allowed me to draw some of my chosen subjects from life, as they were in season. So Forsythia, and cherry blossom filled my sketchbook for a while!

Even while drawing, I was mindful of that L shaped space designated for my designs. That was one of the reasons I chose tree and shrub branches for some of my subjects, as they would lend themselves to the shape.

I drew and painted a range of plants, including orchids, succulents, dandelions, and falling autumnal leaves. Once I had motifs I was pleased with, I scanned them at high resolution in colour and then cleaned them up a bit in photoshop. In some cases, I also added in some silhoutte shapes in a pale block colour, behind the paintings to give the final motif more depth. You can see this in the pale pink solid flowers, in the background, below.

I decided in every case to leave the backgrounds the white of the card. Not only would this be more economical to print, but it would also be dificult to isolate where the design area begins and the text area starts, on these products. I wanted to whole to flow seamlessly together and feel effortless, without creating any uneccesairy divisions and dividing lines.

Once I was happy with the motifs, and I had resized them as necessary to fit the allocated space, I turned my attention to the text. Each card had to say 'thinking of you' but, as with the colour palettes, I decided that one font would not necessarily suit all of the cards, so I chose different fonts for different designs, depending on the style and the space left above it for the phrase.

The only design that eventualy showed any of my beloved lino printing technique, was the dandelions. I used an exisiting dandelino clock print, which I gave a water colour background.

In each case, the design is quite central on the piece of A4 card used to create the final product. The space on the left of my design forms the back of the card, and is full height. I had considered wrapping my design around to the rear of the cards, to give me a larger surface area to decorate. Eventually though, I opted to leave it blank, feeling it might again detract from the flowers. Leaving it blank also allows flower card to add their details, branding and care instructions to the reverse of the card as needed.

Here's the entire collection of nine designs I created for these cards.

You can buy and send all of these designs, as well as flower cards for a range of other occasions at flower card

I hope you have enjoyed reading a little bit about my design process and the creative thinking I employed during this commission.

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