Mari-lena's Portfolio

Project Overview

This New Year’s greeting card distills the essence of celebration into a bold, minimalist statement. Stripped of excess ornamentation, the design relies on stark typography and spatial tension to convey both joy and renewal—a visual toast to new beginnings.

Design Concept

The card’s power emerges from what it refuses to do. Unlike traditional holiday designs cluttered with clichéd imagery (fireworks, champagne flutes), this piece channels the crisp clarity of January’s first morning. The fractured composition—with each word isolated on its own line—suggests a countdown, each line break acting as a silent “3…2…1…” before the New Year’s arrival.

Materials & Technique

• Physicality: Letterpress printing would emboss the heavy typography into cotton paper, making the greeting tactile as well as visual—the recipient’s fingers tracing the words like a whispered wish.
• Digital Precision: Alternatively, crisp vector typography achieves similar impact for mass production, with the negative space between words becoming as deliberate as the text itself.

Color Palette & Typography

Monochromatic Boldness:

• A single vibrant hue floods the text, symbolizing both the intensity of celebration and the blank slate of the coming year.
• The absence of imagery transforms the card into a Rorschach test; some will see confetti in the spacing, others will feel the quietude of resolution.

Typography as Confetti:
The font choice remains deliberately unspecified in the sample, but would ideally feature:

• Chunky slab serifs for timeless solidity
• Slightly irregular kerning to mimic human handwriting’s warmth
• Variable baselines in “Happy / New / Year!” to suggest joyful movement

Final Thoughts

This card doesn’t shout—it resonates. Left on a mantelpiece, its three words become a poetic mantra rather than disposable seasonal kitsch. The exaggerated negative space serves dual purposes: practical room for handwritten notes, and metaphorical room for the recipient’s own hopes. By reducing the design to its linguistic essence, the piece achieves something rare: a holiday greeting that feels both universal and intensely personal.