Corporate Christmas card design

ESA – European Space Agency

Concept Development and Client Request

The European Space Agency entrusted our studio with the design and development of an entirely unprecedented concept for its year-end institutional greetings, to be sent to global partners. The main challenge was to break away from the classic flat postcard format and create high-value, custom corporate Christmas cards tailored for businesses and institutions.

The brief called for an innovative structural prototype capable of combining three strategic objectives:

Gamification and Interaction: Actively engaging the recipient through a physical, tactile experience.
Extended Lifecycle: Designing a premium object that wouldn’t be discarded after opening, but would instead transform into a desk display element (tend-card) throughout the holiday season.
Maximum Visual Consistency: Rigorously respecting institutional guidelines and ESA’s global visual identity, while highlighting the key scientific imagery selected for the current year.

Paper Engineering and Interaction Design

The concept is built upon a custom-engineered, three-dimensional paper architecture. The visual layout and die-cuts intuitively guide the user through the assembly process. The successful closure and proper assembly of the Christmas Card are visually confirmed by the perfect alignment of four colored lines, which graphically represent the macro-areas and sectors into which the agency’s operations are divided. The design features iconic vector elements deeply connected to the space exploration sector, such as a rocket and a planet, strategically positioned to prompt user interaction and visually simulate a landing trajectory.

Visual Communication and Production Details

Once assembly is complete, the card’s base reveals an elegant, minimalist design featuring only the institutional color lines and the promotional tagline: “Keep space on your desk“. This message plays on the double meaning of the word “space” (both the cosmos and physical surface area), indissolubly linking the agency’s core business to a proximity marketing action directly on the partner’s workstation.

Activities

Paper engineering and interaction design, editorial graphic design, development of custom corporate Christmas cards for international companies and institutions.