As some of you know, I was lucky enough to work with Waitrose and Partners on their packaging and point of sale material for Christmas 2018 and Christmas 2019. Although Christmas is almost a distant memory, I thought I would share with you a little bit about the process.

The Brief: We wish you a delicious Christmas

In the summer of 2017 Waitrose & Partners invited me together with some other lettering artists to pitch for their Christmas campaign. Of course in retail they are always working way in advance to enable enough time to plan and produce everything.

The Proposal

I submitted various designs and lettering options for the phrase “We wish you a delicious Christmas”. The design took the shape of a Christmas tree with the word ‘delicious” extending out from the Christmas tree, left and right.

 

 

An email popped into my inbox a few weeks later with some good news. They loved the design and were definitely going to be using it! The above design is the one that was chosen. I made a few tweaks mainly to the lowercase r and s to ensure it was readable as well as submitting some more Christmas phrases. At this stage I didn’t know the extent to which my calligraphy was going to be used but I was of course delighted that my pitch had been successful.

Christmas 2018 & 2019

Fast forward a year and a bit and my son happened to be at a Waitrose conference with his work. He gave me a call on his way home  saying “Mum, I think your calligraphy is going to be on 1500 lines”. I had no idea!!

Not long after, the mince pies started to hit the shelves and finally I got the first glimpse of the packaging in the flesh! My calligraphy was teamed with a lovely modern design by illustrator Hannah Davies.

We wish you a delicious Christmas

The phrase, ‘We wish you a delicious Christmas’ was embroidered onto aprons and tea towels.

 

The staff behind the produce counters were all sporting grey aprons with the embroidery. I couldn’t resist telling them I had done the design!

 

The phrase was used on point of sale displays, posters and printed onto mugs.

 

It was even iced onto Christmas cakes!

 

 

 

Christmas Cheer

Over the next few weeks I was blown away by the support from fellow calligraphers, friends and family. Everyone was genuinely so happy for me! They kept me regularly updated with the products they had spotted together with accompanying photographic evidence!

 

From tissues to toilet paper, from Christmas crackers to cheese,

 

there seemed no end to the number of products featuring my calligraphy. I really was blown away!

 

A Waitrose Christmas

Waitrose and Partners surprised me with a large hamper of Christmas products so it was most definitely a delicious Christmas!

 

Finally a huge thank you to Waitrose and Partners for giving me the opportunity to be part of their Christmas campaign.

Thank you also to Lucy from Fresh Leaf Creative for capturing these images. In years to come I can bore the socks of people and say I once did the packaging for Waitrose!

If you are interested in working with me on any calligraphy or lettering projects do get in touch with the studio.

Have a wonderful year! Christmas 2020 will be here before you know it. Did I really just say that?!!

Warm wishes

Judy