Design a greeting card (or an alternative design piece) by combining botanical illustrations with elegant digital typography.

Create a finished composition that brings together floral or botanical imagery and the text of your choice.

DESIGN OPTIONS

The demo design I’ll be creating in this class is a greeting card, but feel free to adapt the project to suit your own creative goals and interests.

Following this class you can also create:

wedding stationery;
calendar graphics;
packaging designs;
art prints;
podcast or playlist covers;
book covers;
branding elements;
social media graphics.

If you want to create a greeting card or wedding stationery, be sure to make use of the included class resources that will help you tackle this sort of projects with more ease, even if you haven’t created anything like this before.

Start by researching greeting cards (or other relevant kinds of design applications) and botanical designs that inspire you.

Think about what you’d like your final design to be used for and who it’s for — this will help you guide your image choice, develop the tone of the message, select a typeface and explore colours.

Don’t hesitate to check out my curated Type & Flowers research board on Pinterest for inspiration.

TYPES OF IMAGES YOU CAN USE

Public domain vintage illustrations — be sure to reference the attached PDF with the direct links to recommended resources or explore the complete Biodiversity Heritage Library archive on Flickr).
Your own artworks or illustrations if you create botanical work yourself:
- If you are creating your botanical illustrations digitally using Procreate, Fresco, Adobe Photoshop, or any other app, be sure to keep your background transparent to save time cutting elements out afterwards.
- If you are a traditional artist working on paper first, you’ll need to digitise your illustrations and then follow the process I’ll be sharing in this class.

PROJECT & DESIGN COMPLEXITY

If you are after quick experiments and don’t want to get bogged down with the more laborious techniques — or if you are a beginner and simply want to play around — you can skip the lessons about refining the edges of your images, retouching and restoration techniques, and simply jump from quickly isolating your illustration from the background to colour adjustments, and then straight to developing your designs.

And if you are after more polished, high-quality results, you can either go back to the refinement and retouching lessons later on in the process when you are finished with the design development, or follow these lessons straightaway, if you are prepared to put the time into technical refinements before moving on to the creative play.

COMPLETE YOUR CLASS PROJECT

Share the following in your class project:

One or more final designs;
Your original source images or your own botanical illustrations;
Any variants or work-in-progress images or screenshots (if you’d like specific feedback);
Any inspirational references or visual research (optional);
Any design mock-ups* you create (optional);
A few short notes:
- What’s the intended use for your design?
- How did you choose your images, message and typeface?
- What did you enjoy the most or learn in the process?

Have fun experimenting, and I cannot wait to see what you create!

—Evgeniya

* If you want to learn how to create your own captivating mock-ups to showcase your designs in any setting you desire, be sure to check out my classes Create Unique Framed Art Mock-ups with Adobe Firefly & Adobe Photoshop & Create Unique Packaging & Printed Product Mock-ups with Adobe Firefly & Adobe Photoshop.

Nina Schmalenbach

Textile designer

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