June 30, 2008

Photo Holiday Cards: Minted Again

Thanks everyone for voting in Minted.com‘s Holiday Photo Card Design Contest.

Both designs I submitted were runner-ups (yay!) and will be for sale on Minted.com for the holiday season soon. Each of the designs have an alternate color combination, too.

There were more contest entries this time and so many wonderful designs!

You can view the winning designs and hear what David Turner of Turner Duckworth had to say about his selection. (Congratulations, Annie Clark!)

Most of what he had to say I had thought about and with templates it seems a delicate balance of pushing the envelope and accommodating the various permutations of customer-supplied imagery. Given that we were supplied with three images from which to choose, this contest as the previous, were custom designs and I thought many of the designers did a great job.

With any design job where photos are not created specifically for a job, the results can be a crap shoot. In fact, even commissioned photography can be a crap shoot though rare thankfully with careful, thoughtful vetting, assigning and editing. And as designers, we work within constraints and work hard to deliver fantastic results no matter what the challenges.

So in the case of photo card templates, photo guidelines for customers seems a way to help both sides. And really, spend a little more for high quality images. It’s worth it!