Pantone Inspired Christmas Posters & Cards. Christmas By Colour.

Last year Raw Design Studio of Greater Manchester created a very fun project that utilized consumer opinion, content and creativity to bring Christmas By Colour to life.



A collaborative project that explored the colours (or colors, as we spell it in the U.S.) that people personally associate with Christmas --other than the traditional red, green and white. The project resulted in Christmas By Colour, Pantone®-inspired Christmas Colours which they turned into a poster and sold to benefit a charity. This year they've created another poster as well as greeting cards.



To create Christmas By Colour, Raw reached out to the online community and asked people to submit their best "Christmas" colors and assign a related name to each.



Thousands of people from around the world embraced the project and relished the opportunity to suggest their own colour and its personal meaning. Raw then handpicked the best to go on their nice list and be featured on their popular Pantone-inspired A1 poster, wrapping paper and cards whose proceeds were donated to C.A.L.M - a charity aimed at helping young men deal with depression.

Submitted were several very clever (and some not so clever) names and colors. Here are the selection for the "Nice List" and in turn, are the ones printed on this years' poster:







The resulting products:

"Hue, hue, hue…" A set of twelve Christmas cards based on colours submitted to their Christmas by Colour project. The cards are split into two packs with six in each pack, printed 4-colour litho on Trucard and measure 165mm x 117mm. They are blank inside and white envelopes are included.

The set includes the following designs:

Pack one:

Quality Street (Guy Moorhouse)
Sprouts (John Dowling)
Yellow snow (Nick Greenwood)
Mulled wine (Tash Willcocks)
End of the Sellotape (Pete Clarke)
Park Lane & Mayfair (Jez Burrows)

Pack two:

Bank balance (Tom Heaton)
Granny's whiskers (Jordan Nelson)
After Eights (Shane Phillips)
Bucks Fizz (Gil Cocker)
Pigs in blankets (Sean Rees)
Walking in the Air (Kelly Mackenzie)

buy them here


"So this is Christmas..." Limited edition poster and a free sheet of wrapping paper:



Printed on 135gsm Naturalis Absolute white thanks to those fantastic people at GFSmith. Limited edition of 500 includes a free A2 sheet of CBC wrapping paper! The chosen colors were also turned into stickers for the poster tubes:



buy the poster here

Raw Design Studio
The Engine House
Islington Mill Studios
James Street
Salford, Greater Manchester
M3 5HW

Passionate about Pantone? Then, boy do I have posts for you:

Pantone Dinnerware and More.

It's A Pantone Party! More Pantone Products

The Pantone Party Continues With More New Products

Pantone Continues Their Colorful Collaborations

Pantone A Plenty... AGAIN! Now For The Kitchen

More Pantone Products! Folding Chairs, Storage Boxes ...

Three Pantone Bikes - Color Me 364C With Envy

D&AD's divider page imagery contest

Below is reprinted from The Creative Review UK Blog:



In order to provide imagery for the divider pages of this year’s D&AD Annual, Fabrica (who are designing the Annual this year) invited creatives around the world to take a picture featuring a D&AD flag.

The flags were sent out in a pack giving detailed instructions on the brief and how to submit images, the best of which are featured in the 2007 D&AD Annual, out on 4 September. Former D&AD President and founder of CDT Design, Mike Dempsey, however, used his opportunity to point out that perhaps this wasn’t the most environmentally sound exercise they could have come up with…

Dempsey’s response (above) is titled “D&AD’s contribution to the concerns of our planet”. It then goes on to question the point of producing a lavish pack that was sent to 500 D&AD members around the world “asking them to ’show off’ for no useful reason at all. Is this a responsible thing for D&AD to do at this moment in time?” he asks.

His image, unsurprisingly, was not one of those chosen to feature in the final Annual (although to D&AD’s credit, they did include it among a selection of images sent to journalists). However, two other somewhat cheeky contributions did make it in.

Dave King from M&C Saatchi in Australia seems to be implying that a D&AD Award is not quite as important to him as those from Cannes in his image.



While another former D&AD President, Michael Johnson of Johnson Banks, came up with this less-than-reverent idea (Photographer, Richard Maxted):


Others, however, took on the brief in a spirit perhaps closer to what was intended…
Such as Rosie Arnold from BBH. Photographer, Jonathan Kitchen:


And This Is Real Art’s Paul Belford:


And Quentin Newark of Atelier Works:


Other contributors included Steve Royle of The Chase Photographer, Paul Thompson:


The Glue Society. Photographer, Sam Hibbard:


The Designers Republic:


Margaret Calvert:


Ruth Bellotti of Publicis Mojo:


Lance Wyman. Photographer, Jonathan Posnett:


Clemenger BBDO. Photographer, Matt Hoyle:


Stephen Bell, Adam Ellis, Wendy Lewis and Joel Pearce of CPB:


Eike Koenig of The Hort:


And Rune Høgsberg / Bleed :


The D&AD Annual is published on 4 September.
It is only available to members, click here for details
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I don't know if I'm unimpressed with these entries because I've been spoiled by seeing so much untapped creativity on the web... or because I've been in the advertising art direction business for 20 years+. But if this is the best that 'creatives' can do with this assignment, it's no wonder so many people I know have stopped looking at the annual D&AD books.