8 Christmas Graphic Design Tips For Your Blog

Halloween has finished! And by that, I don’t mean the US election. There’s no rest for a blogger, though! We’re immediately pushing on with our holiday digital design guide, focused this time around Christmas graphic design tips and all of their wintery goodness!

There’s a lot of design opportunities when building graphics to promote your blog around Christmas. Luckily, Christmas is already an extremely visual holiday so it makes sense for us to take advantage of that!

Below you’ll find a summary of the christmas graphic design tips featured in this article, with a full breakdown below the graphic!

Share this infographic!

#1 It’s all about that palette

Your colour palette sets the tone for any design you are producing.

If your colours are wrong, your design will never work.

A palette rich in different tones of reds and greens will work extremely well for a Christmas design. Blues are useful for things like backgrounds or accent elements. Remember, Santa and Rudolf’s nose should be the same hue of red! 🎅

#2 Christmassy fonts can be a gift, but can also be a curse

Remember when I told you to be careful about the amount of spooky fonts you use? Very much the same applies here, perhaps it might even be more critical. Christmassy fonts should be respected and only used for focal points in your design work – like your header.

I’d also steer clear of particularly ‘showy’ fonts that feature little Rudolfs on the letters, instead go for something cursive and fun.

#3 No surprises here, Christmas icons are a winner!

It wouldn’t be Christmas without a few Christmas icons.

In my opinion, festive icons are one of the best ways to get your design work moving from something that looks ‘okay’ to something which looks fantastic. Take a look at the infographic above – the header of which was looking a bit bare without the icons in place. Simply adding a few snowflakes and a well placed bauble makes all the difference!

#4 Snowflakes add visual interest

One of the best wintery icons to use in your design work this Christmas is the snowflake. The reason this icon is such a useful little icon to have in your arsenal for your festive design, is that it’s an incredibly flexible shape that will add considerable visual interest to your however rarely detracts focus from it.

Tip: vary your use of snowflakes above and below your focus point. This will add depth to your design work.

We’ll come onto how you can create even more effective depth later.

#5 Get wintery with your photography

For certain design works, and it’s especially true for blog graphics, photography can help boost how professional your work looks.

Instead of a wintery scene, or a cheesy mock-up photo of Santa’s sleigh, instead try to find subtle shots of abstract subjects like Christmas lights or wreaths.

Luckily, finding great stock photos for free doesn’t have to be a struggle. This list of websites will get you well on your way.

#6 Keep dark and gloomy for Halloween, Christmas is all about optimism!

When we were designing our graphics for Halloween, I told you to keep the mood gloomy and spooky.

Christmas is the complete opposite here; and I think all of your festive graphics should have a overwhelmingly happy vibe.

Keep your background colours light, and steer away from using too many dark palette colours like baby blue. White space can also be used go great effect on Christmas graphics too, so don’t feel the need to fill up your entire canvas!

#7 Add depth with some carefully added blur

Shadows are a great way to add depth to your designs, blur is probably an even more effective way. Elements like blurred snowflakes and soft lights can immediately make your work look much more effective.

Remember to have a mixture of different blur levels. Your elements that are ‘closest’ should have little to no blur, whilst the smaller elements that will look far away should be dramatically more blurred.

Add a few snowflakes into your design. Decrease their size, and apply a blur effect. You might be amazed at the result!

#8 That’s a wrap! Well, wrapping paper

I apologise to anyone who read that pun. I couldn’t resist.

Using a Christmas wrapping paper texture as the base of your design can work wonders in helping the overall feel. Remember to go extremely subtle with effect, and use a technique like texturising to make sure the background doesn’t overpower your main focus.

Textures like this photo will work well, if you use an effectively contrasting overlay colour.

All of our Christmas graphic design tips have been delivered!

That concludes the selection of tips that aim to improve your graphic design this Christmas. Your blog has never looked so festive! Go forth and spread pixels, and so on.

If you’re looking for more design tips and tricks, this collection of 33 tips specifically for beginner designers might just be for you.