You put in hours to get the perfect family Christmas photo, let’s make the holiday newsletter as easy as possible.
Graphic Designer Alma Loveland has five creative concepts for your Christmas newsletter.
THE NOVEL
This style of newsletter is very traditional, and it shares all your news from the year with your friends and family! Minimal tech skills are required for this; you can pick up a pack of holiday paper at an office supply store, use a word processor to prepare the letter, and print it out at home! Include a photo and you’re all set!
This is the style of newsletter that most of us grew up with, but it’s fading from popularity, probably because Facebook, blogs, and other social media keep us much more connected than we were twenty years ago. It’s still a good format to consider, and is one of the better options if you have sad news or tragedy from the year that would be insensitive to gloss over in one of the other formats!
TOP 12 MOMENTS OF 2012
A fun way to sum up your year is to choose 12 highlights. This works especially well if you have 12 photos to accompany your highlights.
This could be a great way to use your Instagram photos. Card sites like Shutterfly have a variety of templates in this format. It’s quick and easy to choose a design, upload your pictures, and add your text.
THE NIBBLE
Not up to writing out everything? Feel like you don’t have to because everyone probably already knows your news? You can sum up your year briefly in 1-3 paragraphs, and fit it onto a fun photo card. This takes you just a few minutes to write and it takes your recipients just a few minutes to read so that they can quickly get back to the hustle and bustle of the holiday season!
There are lots of great templates over on card sites like Shutterfly, or a variety of templates I have designed at Nicole’s Classes.
FILL IN THE BLANK
If you’re tired of the “novel” but want something simple that you can do inexpensively using just your word processor, consider a Fill in the Blank or Mad Libs style newsletter! Write out a brief summary of your year, and make sure to use lots of adjectives and adverbs. Go back over your letter, and start to take out adjectives, adverbs, and nouns that are not necessary to the meat of the letter. As long as your readers can get the gist of what you have to report, they’ll get a kick out of filling in the wrong words!
Need an example to get you started? Look at what I’ve done a little more closely [page 1 and page 2]
INFOGRAPHIC
This year’s big trend in holiday newsletters is the Infographic. These aren’t too difficult to put together, but you’ll need a professional program like Photoshop or Illustrator to be able to do it, or a niece or nephew who can do it and owes you a favor.
You can download this set of generic newsletter icons to get you started, and head over to Nicole’s Classes to see more details on how you can do this yourself!
Don’t forget that people still want to see a photo, so if you’re creating an infographic, consider printing it on the opposite side of your holiday photo card. The infographic style would look great on any of the backs of the photo card templates that I have available through Nicole’s Classes.
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