Louisiana Farm Bureau Holiday Shop

OVERVIEW

Create a graphics package promoting the Louisiana Farm Bureau Holiday Shop program. This program offers Louisiana Farm Bureau members the opportunity to purchase citrus trees and a variety of pecan products -- all from local farmers in Louisiana. We also offer mixed nut varieties and caramel popcorn from Florida producers and farmers, thanks to our partnership with Florida Farm Bureau.

THE CHALLENGE

To create a graphics series that promoted Holiday Shop, and could run for the next five years. This means I needed to create a system and a theme highlighting Christmas and agriculture that would be consistent and relevant until 2022.

THE SOLUTION

To develop a graphics series for Holiday Shop that could run for five years, I set out to create a consistent visual system blending Christmas nostalgia with Louisiana agriculture. I challenged myself to use a five-color palette centered around PMS 202 (Farm Bureau Maroon), supported by four complementary holiday tones. Using inspiration from color resources like Design Seeds, Pinterest, and Dribbble, I carefully refined the palette to ensure brand consistency while maintaining a festive feel. Limiting the palette pushed me to explore texture, depth, and composition in new ways—using sea-green for plant elements, aqua for backgrounds, and gold and off-white as subtle accents to highlight without overpowering the maroon.

The inaugural 2018 design centered around a nostalgic 1955 Ford F-150 farm truck—a nod to our Ford partnership and inspired by vintage agricultural Christmas cards. The truck bed was filled with product crates featuring satsumas, pecans, jellies, peanuts, and cashews, alongside fruit-bearing citrus trees to represent our live tree offerings. Branded elements such as the Holiday Shop name and company logo were subtly placed throughout the illustration. This piece laid the foundation for the visual tone of the series and set a precedent for reusing and refining elements in subsequent years.

In 2019, I moved from vehicles to architecture, choosing a farmhouse inspired by traditional southern homes and decorated with elements from vintage cards and Pinterest references. I avoided snow to keep the scene authentic to Louisiana winters and instead used lighting, texture, and repurposed assets from 2018 to add depth. The Christmas trees were rebuilt with improved techniques, and new elements—like the house and roof textures—were created from scratch. This installment allowed me to experiment more with Illustrator tools and expand the system while keeping it cohesive and efficient.

By 2020, I returned to a vehicle concept with a 1947 Farmall Row Crop Style tractor, customized with a 1948 engine and a safety roll cage per request from our Safety Department. I reused and rebuilt prior assets for efficiency and brand continuity. The challenge was showcasing mechanical detail without visual clutter, solved by layering textures and foreground elements. The tractor body was again rendered in maroon, with product crates flanking each side to maintain the promotional element. In 2021, I completed the series with a classic Louisiana barn, referencing real local structures and balancing authenticity with holiday charm. Of three barn concepts presented, the client selected the one that best reflected a working farm aesthetic, bringing the series full circle with a strong, familiar agricultural symbol.