SAMFORD UNIVERSITY – CHRISTMAS CARD

Samford University holds an annual Christmas card design contest for students. The winning design is chosen by the university president’s family, and used as their official Christmas card for the year. When designing my submission, I was inspired to try and avoid clichés as much as possible. I wanted my design to stand out, and thus intentionally eschewed the typical red/green color scheme and Christmas iconography. I was instead drawn to Samford’s characteristic lamp posts, and from there made the connection to the lamp post at the entrance to C.S. Lewis’ fantasy land of Narnia. Samford, being a Christian university, is collectively quite fond of Lewis as an author and theologian, so this connection fit perfectly. I then sought to illustrate Samford in a similarly snowy and elegant way, reminiscent of The Chronicles of Narnia. This approach proved quite popular, and my Christmas card design was chosen for use by the president’s family!