There’s only a few days until the festive period. So I’d just like to say, I hope you enjoy Christmas and new year, and that you return to work feeling refreshed and not too bloated by all the seasonal food and drink!
Just like getting a gift under the tree from Santa, I always enjoy getting a job back from the printer or finisher, the anticipation of opening the box to find what’s inside, the smell of the board or ink, the feel of the stock. You can’t beat it.
The 2010 Very Own Studio Christmas cards were dispatched last week – if you got one, I hope you like it, if not I’m sorry, I’m sure I forgot a few people! The card is a study of snowflakes, 24 to be precise, the final space on the grid is taken up by the VOS roundel graphic. The idea being that each shape represents a day of December, the 25th being Christmas day.
Snowflakes have an obvious beauty, but although they are formed through natural conditions, they remain consistent in a few ways. Snowflakes are generally six sided shapes, they are often symmetrical and the likelihood of two flakes taking the same formation is extremely low.
When researching the design for the Christmas card, a major influence was the photographic work of Wilson A. Bentley, otherwise known as Snowflake Bentley.
According to the website set up to preserve the memory of Bentley and what he achieved “Bentley attracted world attention with his pioneering work in the area of photomicrography. By adapting a microscope to a bellows camera, and through years of trial and error, in 1885 he became the first person to photograph a single snow crystal. He would go on to capture more than 5000 snowflakes during his lifetime, not finding any two alike. In 1931 his book ‘Snow Crystals’, containing more than 2400 images, was published.”
Below are some of the images that Bentley captured.
Beautiful, I’m sure you’ll agree – although they look better close up than they do when you’re sitting in a traffic jam trying to get from A to B. On that note, have a safe Christmas. See you on the other side.
