UBC IT Christmas Cards

Every year at Christmas, UBC IT gives their staff a Christmas card (signed by the senior management team). Since I have been working there, and a part of the Christmas celebrations (about 3 years), they have given out Costco cards. Now, Costco cards are pretty cool. They were the 3D ones with hand embellished details. Pretty fancy stoof. However, I thought it would be an excellent idea if this year, Senior Management MADE the cards for all the employees (about 150 people). This way, the cards can also incorporate characters from our marketing campaign, and it shows a little more personal effort on the part of Senior Management (often viewed by employees as distant and apathetic - typical feeling in a lot of organizations).

Yesterday, I pitched the idea to the HR Manager and the Director of Support. They approved, and so the HR Manager will in turn will pitch it to our Associate Vice President and Executive Director later this week. Imagine getting a card from the Executive Director that was made by him personally, and on the back, it will say "Made By... " I suppose some employees could view that as a bit creepy, but it shows that they cared enough to put a bit more effort into it. And also do something a little FUN (dear God NO!)

Mind you, if this goes through, I won't just throw a bunch of Bazzil cardstock at them with some glue and a few papercutters. I am anticipating that the card pieces will have to be pre-cut and semi-fabricated to some extent. After all, these are complete non-crafters here. I don't think 150 cards will be that bad... I've got some people from my team roped in to helping me already...

As mentioned before the characters are from our marketing campaign. I just worked a little santa hat on them in Adobe Illustrator and color printed on cardstock. The paper is also just printed off the computer.

And yes, at my place of employement, I usually take initative to force something like this upon the mostly dry and no-fun IT folks. It's part of my duty as one of the few employees under 40.

A few more sample cards:






(Sidebar: Sorry this posting is late! I tried to post yesterday, but my inet was being sporadic. But I feel like I can't really complain to Telus because I get a pretty good deal on it...the student plan from Telus: $19.99 a month for High-speed Enhanced. Oh well. It's back up and running fine today.)