Mark Armstrong Illustration Specializing In Content Marketing Advertising Editorial Infographics Animation Videos and Social Media

Here’s a story about a greeting card design, shoveling snow, and letting your subconscious do the work.

I was working on a Christmas card design. I thought I had a sure-fire gag: “burning” CD’s by putting them in a toaster.

I needed a funny payoff line inside the card, and some sort of setup line (text) on the outside along with the drawing.

My original idea for the setup line was “I burned you a couple of CD’s.” And because it was a Christmas card, I made one CD red, and the other green. So the front looked like this:

For the inside payoff line, I thought one of these might work:

“Pretty hot stuff. Merry Christmas!”

“You do like Christmas carols, I hope.”

“Ho-ho-ho. Merry Christmas!!”

But it all fell flat. The joke was there, I could feel it– but it wasn’t working. Something was wrong, and I couldn’t figure out what it was.

Eventually I walked away from it (which is always hard for me to do).

Not sure how much time elapsed, but I was out shoveling snow last week, not thinking of anything in particular, when suddenly the answer popped into my head: the “I burned you a couple of CD’s” belonged inside the card as the payoff line.

I decided to use “You like Christmas carols, am I right??” as the setup line, and “Good. I burned you a couple of CD’s” as the payoff line inside.

I made a few other tweaks as well (described below). Here’s a compare. Click the image to see the compare at full-screen size.

Besides giving your subconscious time to solve a problem, letting an image lie has another advantage: when you revisit it, you suddenly see corrections that are needed, and/or ways to improve the image.

I saw that my “smoke puff lines” needed to expand to fit the entire smoke cloud.

If you click to enlarge the compare, you’ll see that the original toaster settings bar was brown which clashes with the surrounding black trim.

And finally, adding a red border gave the card a cheerier, more finished look.

So next time you’re stuck, walk away, do some grunt work, and let your subconscious solve the problem for you.

You can see all my card designs in my online store.

*       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *

About Mark: I’m an illustrator specializing in humor, branding, social media, and content marketing. My images are different, like your brand needs to be.

You can view my portfolio, and connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Questions? Send me an email.

Follow @mrstrongarm