Creating a Merry Christmas: 'twas the July before Christmas when all through Brian Thomas Display & Packaging, all the design employees were stirring, creating a concept for the company's promotional Christmas card

Paperboard Packaging, Dec, 2003

Houston-based Brian Thomas Display & Packaging has won numerous design awards, including this year's People's Choice award at the Association of Independent Corrugated Converters (AICC) 11th International Corrugated Packaging Design Competition. The company also won another AICC award this year for its 2001 Christmas Card.

The design team at Brian Thomas started working on the concept for the 2001 Christmas card in July 2001. The previous year, the company had designed and manufactured a card in the style of a book. The book was direct printed, had a foam insert filled with candy, and incorporated a Christmas tune that played when the cover of the book was opened. That 2000 Christmas card also won a first place award at the 2001 AICC competition.

The 2001 Christmas card carried on the book theme, but Brian Thomas wanted to showcase capabilities other than just direct printing. "Something with direct printing, labeling and maybe the use of some other materials," says Graphics Coordinator Brian Carter.

Once agreed upon, the design team created a rough draft for the casing of the book. Generic "pop-up" pieces were designed for the inside. The die-lines for these pieces were output on Mylar[R] at 200 percent production size so that art could be designed.

While the sales manager created the pencil illustrations and wrote the storyline (Where did Santa get his Boots?), the design team finalized the design for the book casing. The design team researched leather samples for the cover, and worked on designing the gift box, insert and foam. Once the art was complete, a star was diecut out of the gift box to line up with the star on the boot on the cover.

The book and pop-up inserts were all printed on a single 28- by 40-inch, 80-pound C1S label and coated with a mil polylam. The book and inserts were held together using two-sided tape. The gift box cover was printed one color on CIP, giving it a textured look. "Red waveflute was used for the ribbon and bottom of the gift box to show something a little different that our customers may not be used to seeing used in a manufactured piece," Carter says.

Brian Thomas used red R44 foam inside the gift box to match the red waveflute, and the opening in the foam that holds the candy was diecut in the shape of Texas to help carry the Texas theme of the story line--Texas is where Santa lives the rest of the year. Finally, everything was packed into a RETF style shipper and mailed to the company's customers, family and friends.