Any way you look at it, this has been a hell of a year. We’re still recovering from 2016’s ups and downs, and we know that many of you have been feeling the same way. This year we wanted to send a message (in the form of a snail-mail postcard) thanking all of our clients, partners, and friends for their support, and their commitment to fighting for positive change across the globe.
The Process
We went into this process with a clear vision for how we wanted the card to make people feel: hopeful, united, encouraged, and supported. But, as with any creative process, there was a lot of back and forth on the best way to channel these emotions through the design.
The direction for this piece stemmed from this brainstorming of words and thoughts that reflected how our team was feeling at the time. We worked together to come up with a message that we thought would resonate well with our community as a “thank you” and a “keep going.”
Radish Lab works with amazing organizations whose work is critical in building a more just and equitable world. Our team wanted to think about how we could support each of you and move forward into the next year with deliberation and determination to create deeper and stronger change. We also wanted to evoke a feeling of togetherness, because we are all fighting for a cause, and the work you do (and the work we do), represents a seedling that is planted to spread the love and growth we see in the potential all around us.
We tried various directions before deciding on the one with the seed. I wanted to illustrate that we are changemakers and we’re passing this aspect of who we are along to others. I wanted to work with non-traditional colors as opposed to traditional holiday colors because we wanted the message to feel like ours, and I explored movement with the illustration to evoke feelings of growth and development.
We found this approach to be more impactful than just a seasons greeting. This is bright, bold, and illustrative. To put it shortly, it’s different. It’s busy with plants, as a jungle would be; a metaphor for the jungle of our imagination: alive, colorful, and busy! In the end, I worked with three layers in this illustration to build up a framework of foliage surrounding the hands as the focal point. After my initial sketch, I began drawing plants on tracing paper, and went from there adding more plants on a second layer of tracing paper. I liked the result of a seemingly dense rainforest, and stuck with that. All these parts came together as I envisioned in my initial sketch, but piecing together the puzzle made the process much more flexible and enjoyable.
The Signing Party
After ordering the cards from our friends at MOO.com and picking up a fresh set of gel pens (in keeping with the bright colors of the card) we were all set to write notes to some of our favorite people. In the spirit of community and togetherness, the Radishes convened to write and sign cards to our clients, friends, and family members (even Chris’s nonna got a card!). As we wrote our messages and addressed and stamped the envelopes, we drank a little wine, ate a lot fancy cheese, had some laughs, and rocked out to top-notch Christmas jams. We also turned the focus to talk together about we plan to create change and do good in both our personal and professional lives moving forward.
The Radishes really value all of our clients and the work that they do each day, and we wanted to convey that with our words of affirmation as we all move forward into 2017. We wanted all of the organizations we work with to feel supported, from a creative perspective, but also a personal one. This quote by Mahatma Gandhi resonates so much with me, and I feel it is so applicable to the way we try to live our lives; to “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
