Spruce Up Your Business With These Holiday Tutorials and Resources

Jennifer
December 7, 2009

My procrastinating self finally accepted that the holidays are in full swing when I heard Trans-Siberian Orchestra in a salon last week. If you’re also behind on including the holidays in your marketing efforts, don’t despair: There are a few days left before Hanukkah and a couple of weeks before Christmas and Kwanzaa. And the best part of the holiday season is you can use the same graphics throughout December and January if you stick with secular, winter images.

You can call attention to your company by enhancing your website, snail-mail or e-newsletter, banners, posters and flyers. Here are resources to get you started. Naldz Graphics has 45 Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop tutorials, including how to design a Christmas-themed website and greeting card; how to create a Christmas tree, ornaments and a Santa Claus hat; and how to make entire wintry scenes with snowflakes, falling snow and snowmen. There’s even a tutorial for how to create text with snow effects and a pretty girl in a Santa suit. Have a photograph in which you want to make the holiday lights really pop? The MCP Actions Blog has a tutorial for how to enhance those lights using Photoshop. An image like this would look great on your company’s holiday card! Phases Design Studio has 25 Photoshop and Illustrator brush sets to create snowflakes, pine trees, ornaments, glitter, ribbons, cookies, a Nativity scene, wreaths and penguins. Yes, penguins = winter. GraphicRiver has holiday vector illustrations by Kai Loon that include candy canes, bells, a Star of David, snowmen, elves, presents and holly. The Graphic Design Blog reminds you to dress up your own blog and desktop, so it has 25 Christmas icon sets, including mistletoe, stars, reindeer, a gingerbread man, gift tags, stockings, snow globes and a sleigh. Kaboose has Kwanzaa clip art, and BillyBear4Kids.com has Kwanzaa icons. Finally, I wasn’t a fan of any of the Festivus tutorials I came across. If anyone wants to clue us in on how to design a Festivus pole, please do! Still in a “Bah, humbug” mood? Make yourself a holiday mix to boost your spirits!

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About Jennifer Moline

Jennifer Moline writes for the PsPrint Blog as well as maintains its Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus and Pinterest presences. She also guest-blogs for such notable graphic design blogs as Fuel Your Creativity and Inspiredology. She’s previously written about technology and small business for news websites, magazines and newspapers. In her off-hours, Jennifer can be found roughing it in the mountains or tucked away in a movie theater.

Anonymous's picture
January 07, 2016 03:21 am #

Regardless, it’s always good to get an outsider’s perspective on web design. We are usually looking outward, from the inside. Yet, our work is intended for people who are from the outside, but rarely have the time to “look in”. So being able to see how they see is always worth our time. Very cool, I like them, thanks!

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The PsPrint Blog is a resource for graphic designers, freelancers, small business owners and fans of print marketing. You'll find helpful techniques on printing everything there is to print, including business cards, postcards, brochures, stickers, invitations, greeting cards, door hangers, magnets and more. The PsPrint Blog shares creative ways to improve your design and layout skills, and useful tips for marketing your business in any medium. We also like to have a little fun, sharing design inspiration and spotlighting some our favorite customers' printed pieces in our "Hot Off the Press" series.