Ideal Home magazine • Bespoke designs for the Complete Guide to Christmas

“This magazine is the essence of Christmas and I love the challenge of making it fresh and exciting each year””

Brief

I started working on Christmas projects for Ideal Home magazine in 2014. The brief is always clear: create something beautiful. And I have to admit that this is my favourite kind of brief, especially where Christmas is concerned.

Concept

This project has a special place in my heart and I always want it to look like a bespoke creative solution, so I start with a blank sheet of paper every time. I love to put together a moodboard of hand-drawn devices like roundels and page decorations, headline fonts that have a bit of a festive flourish, and palettes of home-grown reds, blues, browns and greys that always complement Christmas imagery.

Story of the project

I start concepting the look and feel of the magazine in July to coincide with the press shows, which inform the Christmas trends that year. This in turn helps me to pitch the look of the magazine towards either more aspirational or more homespun, which has been the case in more recent years.