The holiday season is the perfect time of year to pull out all the stops to engage customers and drive holiday sales using high-quality visual content.

From eye-catching holiday graphics to festive logos, you can create engaging visuals that capture attention and inspire action.

So get ready to deck the halls with your best visual content yet.

Here are seven ideas to get you started if you’re looking for ways to take your visual content to the next level this holiday season.

Let’s dive in.

1. Use creative typography to add interest and provide context

Typography is an essential aspect of visual content. Creating a focal point with text can turn any ordinary photo into a beautiful masterpiece. It also adds flair without being too overpowering.

Try experimenting with different fonts, font sizes, and text alignment to create contrast, add visual interest, and build a connection with your target audience.

Kohls does an excellent job using fun and engaging typography on their kids’ toys landing page. Alternating the font colors and playing around with the size and spacing of the lettering creates a whimsical vibe, perfect for attracting children’s attention to “The Toy Box.”

The content wouldn’t have the same effect if they used a dull, black, symmetrical font. It’s crucial that whatever typography you choose aligns with both your brand and your target audience.

For example, if you have an edgy and modern brand, it may be best to use a more traditional or classic style for your holiday posts. In other words, choosing a font that’s easy to read and consistent with your brand is critical to the success of your content.

The purpose of typography isn’t just about looking pretty — it’s also about aiding comprehension of your content.

Take Olipop’s Thanksgiving post on Instagram as an example. Without adding the “thankful” text, the photo doesn’t hold much meaning. You’d only see two people performing cheers with their soda cans.

By adding the text at the top of the image (and using the appropriate fall colors), it’s clear that this photo is related to Thanksgiving rather than Valentine’s Day or another celebratory event.

Don’t underestimate the power of typography. It makes more of a difference than you might think.

2. Experiment with color combinations and gradient backgrounds

The holiday season is the perfect time to experiment with color combinations, gradient backgrounds, and complementary and analogous colors.

Gradient backgrounds can add dimension and depth and can also help to create a sense of movement. To create a gradient background, start by choosing two colors. Then, use a photo editing tool to blend the two colors together.

Starbucks is the king of holiday content. This festive Instagram post uses a green gradient background to show off their new holiday drink, the Iced Sugar Cookie Almond Milk Latte.

Choosing the right colors for your visual content is key to capturing your audience’s attention.

Colors can create contrast, add visual interest, and convey emotion.
Keep the color wheel in mind when choosing colors for your holiday visuals:

• Complementary colors (red and green) are opposite each other on the color wheel and can create high levels of contrast.
• Analogous colors (yellow and green) are next to each other on the color wheel and can create more subtlety and harmony.

3. Add festive holiday graphics and icons

Who doesn’t love to see cute snowmen or colorful holiday lights during the winter holiday season?

Adding recognizable holiday graphics to your photos, infographics, flow chart, and other types of visual content is a surefire way to spice up your visual content.

For Christmas, red and green colors are always popular choices with a Christmas tree or garland. For Hanukkah, consider adding blue and white alongside a menorah or dreidel. And for New Year’s, gold and silver can be festive and elegant with a clock or champagne glass for the perfect touch.

You can also use holiday-themed graphics and icons in the background of images, not just as overlays.

Recess, a sparkling water brand, uses a photo editor to turn an ordinary photo of three cans into a winter scene of carolers by adding a snowy background, garland, and winter accessories.

The image with the added stickers and background enhances the appearance and is more likely to catch the eye of fast-scrolling users on social media.

4. Create a festive logo

A holiday logo is a great way to show your holiday spirit and promote your business simultaneously. You can use a free logo maker for this.
When making a different version of your logo, it’s crucial to keep the following things in mind:

First, make sure that the logo is festive and seasonal by using holiday-themed colors, fonts, and images. For instance, you can turn one of the letters in your company name into a Santa hat or snowflake. Another thing you can do is include little icons to add a festive touch without altering your logo too much.

Second, ensure that the logo is easy to read and understand.

Third, consider how you want to use your logo. Will you use it on holiday cards, proposals, your website, or social media platforms? Knowing how you want to use your holiday logo will help you choose the right size and format.
Need some inspiration? Check out these popular brands that went above and beyond to create a new logo during the holiday season:

Creating a holiday logo should be a joyful experience. After all, that’s what the holidays are all about! Don’t forget to have fun.

5. Incorporate animated GIFs or videos

Short-form videos are taking over social media by storm.

This medium is highly effective at catching attention and holding interest just long enough for your audience to stick around to see your message.

Plus, GIFs and videos are often more shareable than static images or text-based content, meaning that they have the potential to reach a wider audience.

GIFs are particularly well-suited for social media, where they can help to add a touch of fun and personality to your content. It prevents your audience from scrolling right past your image on Instagram, almost like a double-take once they see the animation like this post of an iced cold brew from Starbucks.

The animation in this post shows the cream slowly pouring, taking over the ice, and turning the dark coffee into a lighter, creamy color. It’s mesmerizing against the holiday lights and red background.

On the other hand, videos offer a more immersive experience that can really capture the spirit of the season. This type of holiday content is perfect for influencers and affiliates to share. So if you are wondering when or how to start an affiliate program, the holiday season can ease you into this type of marketing channel.

So if you’re looking to add a little extra pizazz to your holiday content, consider using animated GIFs or videos to help your holiday content stand out from the rest. Additionally, make sure to use social media analytics tools to track the performance of your holiday content and gain insights into what’s resonating with your audience.

6. Use white space to your advantage for a cleaner look

White space is essential to good graphic design and creating a clean and modern look.

Too much white space can make a design look unfinished, while too little can make it feel cluttered and busy. The key is to find the right balance for your visual content.

Rolex hits the nail on the head with this Instagram post featuring their new mint green dial ahead of the holiday season. Immediately your eye is drawn to the watch, with plenty of white space surrounding the product.

In general, white space should make up about one-fifth of the total space in a design. And lead the eye toward the subject, not away from it. Try placing the subject off-center or using an asymmetrical layout.

By carefully considering the placement within the frame and using white space to your advantage, you can produce beautiful and eye-catching designs to encourage your audience to make a purchase.

7. Use cartoons to your advantage

What do the Harley Quinn Fortnite character and Spongbob have in common?

They’re extremely popular with tweens, generate millions of dollars annually, and are cartoon characters.

So why not follow this popular trend and add some cartoon elements to your visual content this holiday season?
Take a peek at how bright and engaging the Instagram page looks for Fortnite. Looking away is hard, and you instantly want to learn more.

And if you are looking to add some personalization to your website, consider using a photo cartoonizer to turn headshots into fun images on your “about us” page.

Incorporating cartoons into your visual content can help make your brand more fun, relatable, and recognizable.

Everyone loves cartoon characters, so try them out in your next social media post or email marketing campaign. For every dollar spent, email marketing typically yields a return of $36. Simply, you get 36 times your investment of one dollar. According to reports, targeted emails and emails delivered to segmented lists account for 36% of the email marketing ROI for all email campaigns. A verified email list can even increase ROI more than this.

Step up your visual content this holiday season

The holiday season is one of the busiest times of the year.

You don’t have much time to capture your audience’s attention, so make it count by sprucing up your visual content with creative typography, festive holiday graphics, and colorful backgrounds.

If you want to take it up a notch, try creating a holiday version of your logo or a cartoon character.

Use your visual content to increase customer engagement and boost sales this holiday season.

Happy designing!

The post How to Elevate Your Visual Content For the Holiday Season appeared first on Photo to Cartoon – Cartoonize Yourself & Create Avatar Characters for Free.

Summer is about to end and winter is fast approaching in some parts of the world. It’s time to take advantage of this beautiful season. With a little creativity, you can create some amazing winter photographs!

What is the secret to taking great pictures in the snow? It’s not just about shooting what is there, but also using your imagination and creating something new. The best way to do this is by using different perspectives, lighting, and composition. ‍

Create Unique Images That Capture Winter Well!

• Use the Light to Your Advantage

In the winter, it’s best to shoot during the golden hours: sunrise and sunset. These are when there is more natural light and fewer harsh shadows. The golden hour will give you a warm glow for any winter shot.

• Use the Snow to Your Advantage

When it snows, the landscape takes on an even more magical quality than usual—and if you’re lucky, it may even create some beautiful reflections in puddles!

• Know Your Camera Settings

Use a low ISO setting (100 or 200). Be sure that your camera is set up properly so that you don’t get blurry pictures from the camera shaking at low shutter speeds due to poor lighting conditions.

• Stabilize

A tripod will help prevent shaking and will enable longer exposure times without compromising image quality too much. If you don’t have a tripod with you, try using the self-timer to help ensure that your camera is stable when taking the shot.

• Gear Up

Don’t forget to bring along extra batteries, memory cards, and lens cloth—you never know when you’ll need them!

The Challenge of Capturing Fabulous Winter Photos

Photos taken during the wintertime have a lot of appealing qualities, whether it’s the sprinkling of snow, the ominous mist, or the dark tones. However, for many people, capturing a winter scene may be rather challenging due to harsh weather conditions.

Don’t worry! There are ways around this problem. You can add realistic falling snow to your photos using layers or filters and any other elements that add depth and color.

The overlay effect is probably the easiest way to upgrade an image. It can transform a mundane photo into a fabulous one. There are many overlays that you can use to make your photos stand out.

Overlays are unique images that you can add to your photos to give them more depth and character. They can be used to add texture, light leaks, or falling snow effect.

What is an Overlay?

An overlay image is a picture you put on top of another picture. You can use an overlay image to add something to an existing image, make a new kind of image, or even just change the way an existing image looks.

For example, you have a picture of flowers against a blue sky. Instead, you could take another picture of flowers and lay it on top of the first one so that they look like one picture.

Overlays can be used to add texture, depth, and interest to your photos. They can also be used to create a vintage effect or light leak effect. Overlays are also great for adding snow effects to images.

Blending photos and applying overlays can be done by using a photo editor like Photoshop, which is a great way to enhance your photos without much effort.

Can You Add Realistic Falling Snow Effects to Photos?

Adding snow effects to your photos is absolutely possible. There are different ways to do this depending on your editing skills.

A professional graphic artist will do this by using complex software. Like the powerful editing tool Photoshop, it also has a number of functions that can be used to play around with your photos. They spent time learning the editing software, which is why they became experts.

However, if you are a beginner or a hobbyist who just wants to add cool effects to your holiday photos, learning complex software might not be the best option for you. Using a user-friendly editing platform could be just right for you. There are many web and mobile apps available for you to start using without having technical skills.

How to Add Falling Snow to Photo Using Colorcinch

Making your photo pop with a winter wonderland theme is super easy. Add snowfall to photo! For this tutorial, we are going to add falling snow to your image using Colorcinch.

Step 1: Open Colorcinch and Upload an image.

Step 2: Navigate to Overlay on the left side of the panel and it will open a tab of Overlay filters. Scan through it and choose Falling Snow. Pick a Falling Snow filter that would fit your image.

Step 3: Fine-tune the effect by adjusting the Slider. You may have a moderate snowfall or a heavy one, depending on how you like your photos to look. Once adjustments are made, click Apply.

Bonus Tip: You can also click on Settings to have advanced control over the effect. You can further adjust the filter by selecting a Blend Mode.

It’s super easy to create winter photos, right? Let’s look at the final output:

Other Ways to Winterize Your Photos

There are also a few more ways to achieve a holiday season themed photo using Colorcinch.

Color Temperature

Color temperature is a measurement of the warmth or coolness of light. The temperature of the light affects all the colors in the entire image.

Because winter is characterized by colder temperatures and more cloudy skies, photographs taken during this season often contain cooler tones, such as blue and gray. This is because these colors more accurately convey the season’s characteristic appearance.

Let us use the sample photo, to which we have added a snow overlay. We can still improve the winter vibe of our image by tweaking the color temperature.

Step 1: Navigate to Edit — Color

Step 2: Adjust the Temperature Slider to give the image a cooler tone. Once satisfied with the adjustments, click on Apply.

Let’s take a look at the before and after:

Festive Borders

There are also frames that we can use to make our winter-inspired photos look even cooler, no pun intended. Frames are not just decor, but they help accentuate an image.

Step 1: Start by opening Colorcinch and Upload an image. Navigate to Frames. Colorcinch has a wide array of frames to choose from. Scroll down and pick Celebratory.

Step 2: Choose a cool frame. Adjust the Slider to change the intensity of the frame if needed. You have an option to further adjust the filter by clicking on Settings. Once satisfied with the adjustments, click on Apply.

Isn’t it wonderful to have lots of winter filters in just one web app? Here is the final output.

Specialty Overlays

It’s also nice to take note that there are Specialty Overlays in Colorcinch that we can explore. Make your winter photos extra cool by adding one.

Step 1: Navigate to Overlay —Specialty.

Step 2: Choose from the wide array of Specialty Overlays. For this photo, we will be adding a bubble effect. Make your adjustments using the Slider and click Apply once done.

Conclusion

Overlay images are a great way to add unique and eye-catching effects to your photos. They’re also useful for stylizing an image or making changes to it in different ways. If you have an image editor that supports layers, creating overlay images is really simple.

Now you have a bunch of new ways to add snow effects to your photos, so go out and play! Capture beautiful moments and be sure to apply all the techniques we shared with you. I hope you found something useful in this post that will help you make your photos more fun.

The post How to Easily Add Snowfall to Photos with Winterizing Effects appeared first on Photo to Cartoon – Cartoonize Yourself & Create Avatar Characters for Free.