Ah, the annual Pretty Christmas card. Always the hardest project of the year. Couple cliched images of the festive season, along with a tight immoveable deadline and the worst client imaginable (ourselves!), then you’ve got a pretty tricky brief to try and resolve.

But every year we manage it and below we’ve rounded up a few of our favourite cards of Christmases past.

A hand crafted star

The first christmas card we ever sent out wasn’t even a card. We produced 150 of these tiny handmade stars, which involved days of staying late cutting and folding the intricate shapes. We sent them out in tubes to our clients, for them to hang on their christmas trees, computers, desk lamps, wherever!

Festive dot to dot

In 2007, we rebranded Pretty with our pencil logo. We used this as the basis for our xmas card that year, sending everyone an actual pretty pencil alongside a dot to dot puzzle which revealed christmassy shapes.

Decorate a website

In 2009, we thought we take on the task of decorating all of our clients’ websites for them, to get them in the Christmas mood. We sent out an email with a bespoke link to their website with a flash overlay of animated baubles that bounced into position. Take a look!

Christmas word search

Continuing the pencil theme, we created a festive word search for our card in 2010. Finding and circling the clues produced a christmas tree shape, and the remaining letters that hadn’t been used spelt out our christmas message, which we tied in with letting people know that we were moving studio in the new year. This was backed up by an online version that revealed the answers on rollover.

Santa’s beard

Last year’s card gave the recipients the chance to turn themselves into santa with our illustrated beard card.

Let it snow

This year’s card is a create-your-own winter wonderland. A white scratch off foil to the front of the card creates a festive sprinkle of snow when scratched off, and reveals our greeting underneath.

An honourable mention

Now, this one isn’t a card, but it deserves a mention. Having had the idea, we couldn’t rest until we’d created our very own hanging christmas tree made from baubles. We carefully put it away, hoping that we could re-use it in the following years, but as is the way it seemed to have gotten itself into an unresolveable tangle having spent the year in a cardboard box. It looked fantastic when it was up though!