Fifth assignment - Greeting Cards - Christmas and New Year at hand

In this assignment, we are to design a greeting card either for Christmas or New Year. I felt that most people would be doing Christmas themed cards, so I chose to design one for New Year instead.

For this, we have to experiment with colours to determine which colour scheme works best for our final design. I experimented with 16 different colour schemes, including monochromatic, analogous, triad, complementary, black and white, pentagram, single colours and different amounts of K. Below is the end result of the experimentation.
I wanted to choose colour scheme number 11 (3rd column, 3rd row) because I wanted my card to convey a refreshing beginning, and the colours are bright enough to evoke just that. However, classmates commented that it looks kind of kiddish, more for children instead. I agree with that, since bright colours are usually associated with children products.

In the end, Jing and another classmate pointed out that number 8 is actually quite special and might work for what I want to convey. So I chose this colour scheme to develop further on.

Reflection for this assignment:
I didn't like what I have done and I told the class about it. I felt that the design was too simple and didn't really reflect what I wanted to convey, which was that the New Year is a new beginning. The sun looked more like an egg yolk instead of a sun. The class was very helpful and gave me some suggestions on improving this design. One of them was to have more balloons, like an explosion of balloons from the sun.

It was fun to experiment with colours, especially for a rainbow-loving person like me. I definitely learnt more about colours and how they work together from this assignment.

*Edit*
Following up on Jing's suggestion to add more balloons, I experimented with the number of balloons and also the size. In the end, I felt that the card looks more like it was filled with pimples instead of balloons and was not what I want at all. So, getting a little frustrated, I decided to start this project all over again.

This time, I had a clear goal in mind, to create a greeting card that could encapsulate both Christmas and the New Year. So this is what I came up with:


In this version of the greeting card, I wanted to express the idea of a belated Christmas, which is why drew melting snow with a bright sun. In the final selection, I used warmer colours to show that Christmas is almost over, the sun is shining bright and snow is melting. The sky is also of a light blue, to indicate clear skies. In the other colour experimentations, the feeling evoked were of either too cold or too warm, based on the colours I used. For example, the design in the topmost right corner is too warm, because of the warm colours used, like red, orange and brown. It felt more like a Christmas tree in the desert. In the third row rightmost card, it is too cold, due to the cool colours of purple and grey used.