Holt is in charge of getting The City of Sydney into the festive spirit this Christmas, by creating the branding campaign that will promote Sydney’s retail and hospitality sectors and attract tourists.

Steve Howlett, head of creative at the City of Sydney, commented, “The great cities of the world have Christmas experiences that makes them even more joyous destinations at that time of the year. Our annual Christmas campaigns aim to put Sydney on the global ‘festive season map’, creating strong commercial returns for business, making it a special time of year for the people who live and work in this city and drawing in visitors from around the world.”

The creative is built around the clean lines of a recognisable Christmas motif, the triangular pine tree. The ‘tree’ itself is further made up of hundreds of smaller, prismatic triangles in a bold, rich, jewel-like colours. Small ‘leaves’ of colour are blown from the tree shape into its surrounds, as if by wind.

“The 2014 Christmas campaign will be highly visible throughout inner-Sydney via city flags,” Christopher Holt, creative director at Holt explained. “This got us thinking about how to make use of the nature of the medium to augment the creative and give it life. The notion of wind was the basis of this idea.

“From here, the visual brand we developed for Christmas in Sydney this year was inspired by the famous woodcut Travellers Caught in a Sudden breeze at Ejiri by 19^th Century Japanese print-maker and artist Hokusai, and Jeff Wall’s contemporary photographic interpretation of this work, A Sudden Gust of Wind. In this case, the wind seems to physically blow the spirit of Christmas off the tree and out across the city.”

More than 350 individual colours are being used to create a joyful sense of celebration and a festive mood amongst city-goers.

The choice of typography was also important to the creative. Holt opted to create the ‘Happy Christmas’ messaging in Outsiders, a contemporary slab serif font designed by Henrik Kubel at A2 Type foundry in London. “It has a lightness that softens the hard edges of the tree mark, adding a sense of character and giving the identity and campaign a friendly, inclusive voice,” Holt noted.

The campaign will cover the city with metrolights and citylights, city flags, banners, large-scale outdoor billboards, posters, print and online advertising, website, promotional collateral, experiential executions, digital applications and retail activations.