RHS Photographic Competition 2008

Royal Horticultural Society - The Medici Award
For photos of gardens and plants that would make a successful card design.

The Medici Photographer of the Year : Image made into the 2009 RHS/Medici greeting card.


The RHS Photographic Competition, supported by fine art publisher The Medici Society, is for aspiring greeting card designers. Enter an eye catching and commercially savvy photo to win the title of Medici Photographer of the Year and your image will be made into a greeting card.

Here's some advice on choosing an image from Medici CEO, Graeme Derby: “Buying a card is an emotional practice and the card design must move its buyer. Often the picture has to fit a specific purpose, Valentine’s Day or a thank you card. The colours are often bright and the focal point must rest in the top half of the card – so when it’s on display in a shop, the image is not hidden by the stack of cards in front of it. It’s definitely an intriguing process we go through when we buy a card – I think the old slogan, I saw this and thought of you, sums it up best.”

What makes a successful card design?

1. Content choice - does the image fit the occasion; will it seduce the consume; is it a familiar image to the consumer (familiar image=recognition) or alternatively is it unusual and thus attracts our attention for this quality.
2. Focal point – If you mentally divide your screen into three horizontal and three vertical sections, where the lines intersect are focal points. Focal points are what the eyes naturally seek out when they look at a photograph. They may also come through contrasting elements of light and dark, scale, an isolated image, or simply through placement.
3. Unity – the elements of the imagery belong together. If the various elements are not harmonious, if they appear separate or unrelated your composition falls apart and lacks unity.
4. Colour – Properties of colour to consider are hue, intensity, complementary colours and colour discord.
5. Use of balance – A distribution of visual weight within a composition. A sense of balance – generally an innate lack of balance or imbalance disturbs us. However this does not mean that there is no place for purposeful imbalance. An unbalanced image can often interest us and attract our attention for exactly this quality.
6. Texture – the surface quality of objects. Texture appeals to our sense of touch. Even when we do not actually feel an object, our memory provides a sensory reaction or sensation of touch.
7. Scale and proportion – realistic. How is the image filing the space?

Competition details and entry form : RHS