In our world, Christmas in July is a lovely reality—a time for printing holiday card samples, wrapping gifts, and twirling up a Christmas tree. This year, we want to let you in on the fun and pull back the curtain on our year-long creative process that goes into creating a collection we hope will inspire you to spread joy throughout the season.

Without further ado, we are thrilled to (finally!) unveil the 2024 collection for you to enjoy and share with your nearest and dearest. While you wait to stumble across the perfect card for you, here’s a peek behind the scenes of Artifact Uprising’s North Pole.

As you begin to pack away the Christmas decorations and usher in the new year, we begin dreaming up next year’s holiday cards. The process commences with an internal trend forecast, where we look to social media, fashion, interior design, year-end results, and our own intuition to guide our predictions for the year’s most noteworthy trends.

With a trend forecast and a mood board as the firm foundation, our Creative Team dives into preliminary designs, following a traditional upside-down triangle approach. We start with dozens of mock-ups, and after two rounds of reviews, the best designs are perfected and filtered down to shape the well-rounded collection you see today.

This year, Creative Director Aslee Livingston set the tone by embracing key trends while remaining true to our high-design DNA. She envisioned distinctive layouts featuring nostalgic collages and layered compositions, “quiet luxury” elements such as elegant blind debossing, and thoughtful details like stamps, stickers, and bows (lots of bows!).

Aslee also noted her interest in using real lettered-by-hand typography and serifs of all sorts. “I wanted the team to experiment with vintage serifs. They read 1990s to me in a way that feels really fresh right now.”

The result was everything she had imagined and more. Every element of every card was thoughtfully curated to capture the joy and beauty of the season in a way that feels both modern and timeless.

We sat down with the talented women behind the magic to dive into their inspirations and favorite designs. Keep scrolling for an inside look at their creative process—and a sneak peek at their top picks for the 2024 holiday season!

Meet Artifact Uprising’s Associate Art Director, Lauren Ruark. One of her favorite pastimes is tracking trends, and her go-to source is wedding stationery. “Though usually more feminine and decorative than our brand,” she says, “the elevated details inspire me to bring that same level of sophistication to our designs.”

Exhibit A: The Tied With a Bow Holiday Card, her favorite card to design this year. Its most sentimental element is the foil-stamped “With Love” salutation in Lauren’s very own handwriting. She wanted to balance the card’s elegant accents with a candid photo of blurry, real-life moments — the perfect touch of juxtaposition.

Next up: Senior Designer, Jenna Hebeler. She feels most inspired by the world of interior design and enjoys incorporating trending style elements into her designs. The new Retro Checkerboard Holiday Card is a testament to Jenna’s ability to channel her interior insights into fresh and innovative product compositions.

Her favorite card to create was the Photo Captions Holiday Card, featuring text call-outs on the front of the card. “A lot of people send holiday cards as an annual update to keep their loved ones in the loop. I thought it would be fun to highlight those little updates alongside each photo, instead of saving it all for the back of the card.”

Last but certainly not least, meet Alaina Coote, our Associate Designer. Call it a trend, but Alaina has always been attuned to classic design styles with a nostalgic slant. Whether drawing inspiration from unique coffee table books or pulling in concepts from her own works of art, her flair for all things vintage is portrayed often in her tasteful product designs.

It comes as no surprise that her favorite card to design was the Mood Board Holiday Card, where she honed in on one of our key trends for 2024 (“The Return of the Collage”) to create a dynamic, personalized design. It feels like a pinboard filled with your favorite moments from the year—a card that truly captures Alaina’s signature blend of modern nostalgia.