Skoda Christmas 2025
Havas Helia was tasked with developing the creative concept for Skoda's 2025 Christmas email campaign, sent to subscribers during the festive period. Our creative team developed the idea of 'Prep Your Sleigh Like a Pro', an awareness piece that used a playful festive theme to share practical tips for preparing your Skoda for the winter weather, while also highlighting useful vehicle features for travelling over the Christmas period.
My role was to refine and elevate the AI-generated concept visuals into a crafted illustration style and produce a series of four bespoke hero illustrations, used to introduce each module within the email. Stylistically, we wanted the illustrations to feel handmade and textured, as if it had been drawn into a sketchbook with pencils and pens.
The final illustrations were created in Adobe Illustrator using a combination of native roughen and sketch effects, layered with paper textures to achieve the handcrafted aesthetic we were aiming for.
Illustration / Email Design
The creative direction for each hero illustration centred on a curated bundle of key objects that visually represented the advice and features highlighted in the accompanying copy. Each composition was loosely tied together with a ribbon or arranged on a simple, abstract plinth. The colour palette was intentionally restrained, using Skoda's two core green brand colours alongside white to match the simple illustration aesthetic while maintaining a clear connection to the brand.
Havas Helia project team: Jono Owens (Creative Director), Simon Baker (Head of Design), Ellie Skimore (Art Director), Mickey Jones (Copywriter), and Jonathan Martin (Designer and Illustrator).