Our family holiday cards have taken on a life of their own! They are now full-on productions with location scouting, wardrobe, and props — not to mention a touch of digital magic. But they are a ton of fun to create, and the reaction from family and friends is amazing! It’s become one of our favorite family traditions.
2008 inside caption: Wishing you buckets of joy this holiday season!
It all started innocently enough with a photo of our newest Bernstein, Lili, when she was just 6 months old. We did a simple shot of her sitting in a green bucket and slapped it on our Christmas card. Reaction was enthusiastic for more photography, so I obliged. We usually begin brainstorming right after Halloween, with the goal to up the ante and surprise our audience.
2009 featuring our oldest as Santa
2010 inside caption: Wishing your family a magical holiday season!
The process begins around the dinner table. I love a good concept with a tight copy idea! We usually try to cover a topic relating to pop culture and hope we can appeal to the broad age range of our holiday card list. As with any project, we also keep a close eye on the budget as we have not picked up any sponsors for this effort! The only thing more difficult than coming up with a brilliant concept is figuring out the logistics of the shoot. So far, we’ve managed to shoot everyone in the same place at the same time — no small feat!
2011 inside caption: Whether you’re traditional of MODERN, we wish you the very best this holiday season!
2012 - sent with 3D glasses, of course!
2013 inside caption: Happy - Happy - Happy - Ho! Wising you a holiday so happy it goes viral.
inside copy reads “Automatically downloading* our best wishes for a wonderful holiday! *Any similarities to the iTunes campaign for U2’s latest album are completely deliberate. Please delete if you don’t want it."
2015 inside caption: from the other side (of Christmas). Hope you ended the year on a high note!
mailed well after the new year...
This year our resident teen came up with the Adele concept for our card. We knew we would be late this year and the copy/lyric direction was a perfect fit. We just needed to find the right fur jacket (that would fit everyone) and convince ourselves the gag would be worth the humiliation. Well let’s just say, some of us like to diva a little more than others and it was a fight to get those eyelashes off some of us! A quick shoot in our garage studio, a swift stock image search, some holiday lights from 2009’s card, and viola!
Now… what to do for this year?