Every year, creative agencies attempt to outdo themselves with lavish and quirky holiday cards.
In 2022, agencies summed up their year with holiday cards that reflected the trends of the time. Artificial intelligence (AI) appeared prominently, and many shops used the super-hot tech with originality.
It should come as no surprise that AI is once again the center of attention this year. And as the holiday season progresses, agencies have once again found new ways to use familiar tools, with many taking a different tact by crafting recipe books, original carols and crossword puzzles.
Here are eight of our favorite cards this year.
AKQA
Broken gifts don’t have to end up in the trash thanks to AKQA’s handy-dandy guide to fixing things.
To discourage the tremendous waste that follows the gift-giving season, the design shop created Fixmas.gift, a website full of guides to repair common presents such as bicycles, phones and gaming consoles. The site also features an OpenAI-powered chatbot called Fixie that guides people through restoring or properly disposing of other items.
Production company Knucklehead and director Theo James Krekis worked on a hero film to accompany the site.
MSL
MSL is celebrating the holidays in the kitchen. Team members from across the firm have contributed their home-grown recipes to make a 110+ page cookbook.
“Made with MSLove” covers breakfast items such as banana muffins and coffee cakes, lunch sides like soups and chili, dinners including pasta, curry and turkey and desserts spanning from sugar cookies to pavlova.
Warning: this book may cause excess production of saliva.
Lafayette American
Detroit-based agency Lafayette American’s holiday card doubles as a crossword puzzle. Created in partnership with Michael Sharp, the man behind the popular blog about The New York Times crossword puzzle, Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle, the card represents the agency’s ability to solve puzzles for clients while showing off its design chops.
The center of the card forms a heart and contains a secret holiday message.
Fuse Create
Fuse Create is using the holidays as an opportunity to highlight the absurd cost of living in many major cities. The Toronto-based agency built an itty bitty one-square-foot home made of gingerbread, which it put on real estate sites for $1,000 — the average cost of one square foot of real estate in Toronto.
The listing reads, “This unique gem is perfect for downsizers, young families looking for a starter home, or anyone looking to break into this city’s crazy real estate market! This two-bed, one-bath home is located in one of Toronto’s most desirable neighborhoods.
And with a one square foot lot, what it lacks in size, it makes up for with charm and character!
With an asking price of $1000, this listing won’t last long.”
Big
Alabama-based agency Big Communications took its holiday card into the third dimension this year.
The card depicts a large building with 31 windows. As a new one lights up each day of December, it encourages visitors to perform a random joyful act, such as reconnecting with an old friend or spending 10 minutes picking up garbage in your nearby park.
The building spins around to reveal easter eggs such as a dumpster burning next to a person in a hazmat suit.
Luquire
Luquire is offering parents the greatest gift of all by reminding them that it might be time to break the news about Santa Claus not existing.
Its knee-slapping carol is hard not to sing along to, especially with lines such as “Get the kids off of Santa’s knee before puberty.” It’s the agency’s reminder to clients that sometimes speaking with candor is just as important as speaking with kindness.
Team One
Speaking of carols, one downside of the holiday season is that everyone is encouraged to sing, even those who don’t quite have the ear for it. To remedy this issue, Publicis agency Team One put together a practical holiday offering in Uncringemas, an AI harmonizer that turns eardrum-shattering vocals into smooth listening.
Users need simply to select the song they’d like to sing, find their vocal register on a scale from Barry White to Mariah Carey, then read a short passage to familiarize the AI with their voice.
Brownstein
Philly-based agency Brownstein is making the holidays classy with a series of animated holiday cards that double as cocktail recipes. Its website hosts the recipes, which range from the whiskey-based “Original Mad Man” to the White Russian-adjacent “Under the Influencer.”
Aspiring mixologists can peruse the collection to the tune of relaxing jazz.
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