Over the past decade, Amelicor’s annual Christmas greeting has evolved from simple email messages into a tradition featuring beautifully illustrated cows in festive winter settings. At the center of this tradition is Joshua Sagers, the artist and designer behind every Christmas cow illustration since 2014. His creativity has not only shaped our holiday artwork but has also played a meaningful role in the visual identity of Amelicor.
Before the Cows: The Early Years
Long before Joshua began illustrating Christmas cows, Amelicor’s holiday greetings looked very different. In the mid-2000s, the company prepared physical Christmas cards each year, gathering the entire staff for a group photo and surrounding it with a festive border. These were more than just cards—they became annual snapshots of the people who built the company. The last of these photo cards, created in 2009, features many individuals who shaped Amelicor’s history, including some who have since passed on. For many, that card now feels as much like a piece of company heritage as a holiday greeting.
A Look Back: The Last Amelicor Group Photo Christmas Card
By 2010, the company transitioned from physical cards to digital messages, sending Christmas greetings by email instead. These early email versions were simple and heartfelt, relying on colorful text and warm wishes, with no custom graphics or illustrations. At the time, resources were stretched across photography, website updates, and general design responsibilities, leaving little bandwidth for original artwork.
Still, the shift to email opened a new door. Without the constraints of printing or large group photos, the holiday greeting could become something more creative—something uniquely Amelicor. What it needed was an artist who could give the digital format its own identity.
That opportunity arrived when Joshua Sagers joined the team in 2013.
Joshua Joins Amelicor (2013)
When Joshua Sagers joined Amelicor in 2013, he added a new creative dimension to a company already rich in technical expertise and innovation. Amelicor’s history—and the broader DHI Computing Service organization—spanned professional, data-driven industries including banking, medical office software, finance, and dairy management. The company’s visual identity reflected that focus, prioritizing consistency, reliability, and precision.
Joshua, however, brought something different. He wasn’t just a graphic designer who could operate the tools—he was a creator. His strength in Illustrator, his ability to conceptualize, and his natural instinct for storytelling through imagery quickly set him apart.
For those who had been carrying the design workload before he arrived—website updates, photography, layout work, and holiday communications—Joshua’s presence was transformative. He relieved the strain of “design by necessity” and replaced it with purposeful, imaginative work. It didn’t take long for him to become the go-to designer for projects that needed both polish and personality.
The First Christmas Cow (2014) — The Spark That Started It All
In 2014, Amelicor was celebrating its 60th anniversary—a milestone that deserved something special. As the holiday season approached, Joshua was asked to create a simple graphic to accompany that year’s Christmas email message.
Joshua returned with something both unexpected and instantly charming: a quiet winter scene rendered in bold silhouettes, with a Christmas tree standing under a starry sky—and a small group of cows taking the place of the traditional reindeer or woodland animals. It was simple, warm, and unmistakably tied to the dairy community Amelicor serves.
The moment the image was finished, it felt right. Professional but whimsical. Festive but respectful. Creative without straying from the company’s identity. It set a tone that resonated internally and it quickly became clear that Joshua had found a visual language uniquely suited to both Amelicor and the season.
A small message placed beneath the artwork completed the design, and the greeting was sent out as part of the 60th anniversary celebration. Although no one planned it at the time, this would become the first piece in what would evolve into a decade-long Christmas cow tradition.
The following year, when it came time to prepare another holiday email, the natural question arose:
“Joshua, can you make another one?”
And just like that, a series was born.
The Classic Silhouette Series (2014–2019)
The Christmas cow illustration from 2014 set the tone, and over the next several years Joshua expanded that early concept into a cohesive and recognizable visual series. From 2014 through 2019, his holiday artwork shared a consistent aesthetic that would come to define the first chapter of Amelicor’s Christmas tradition.
A Style Built on Simplicity and Symbolism
Joshua’s early pieces relied on silhouettes, clean shapes, and deep night-sky gradients. Trees, hillsides, barns, and nativity-inspired elements appeared in stark black against soft winter skies, creating a sense of quiet and peaceful reverence.
Although the scenes were simple, they carried a surprising amount of character—and always, without fail, they included cows. Sometimes they appeared as stand-ins for traditional Christmas motifs; other times they were incorporated as part of the landscape, watching the night unfold.
A Growing Tradition Takes Shape
With each new illustration, Joshua built on the style of the last while introducing new scenes and compositions. The series began to feel like a set of collectible holiday cards: familiar enough to recognize, yet always fresh enough to surprise.
Joshua’s Influence on Amelicor’s Brand (The 2017 Rebrand)
By the time Joshua had completed several years of Christmas cow illustrations, his creative contributions had already begun to reshape how Amelicor saw itself. Year after year, he delivered artwork that balanced professionalism with warmth, showing that creativity could enhance—not dilute—the company’s credibility in the dairy industry. This growing trust set the stage for one of the most significant changes in the company’s history: the transition from DHI-Provo to Amelicor in 2017.
The rebranding effort emerged from both internal and external needs. Externally, prospects searching for “DHI” often found the dairy-focused DHI-Provo website instead of the broader corporate identity of DHI Computing Service. The confusion highlighted the need for a corporate-level site—one that eventually launched as dhicorp.org—and a clearer division of identities.
Internally, the dairy division had long outgrown the limitations of its original name. DHI-Provo had evolved far beyond its early roots in milk-record processing. Over the decades, the division had added tools like DHI-Plus for herd management, EZfeed for feed management, and EZweights for commodity tracking and harvest management. The growth of products demanded a name that represented improvement, advancement, and modern capabilities.
The solution was Amelicor—a name with roots in ameliorate (“to improve or make better”) and core (“the central and most important parts”). The message was clear: Helping improve the core of your business.
And the visual identity behind that new name?
It came from Joshua.
Building on the trust he had earned through his consistent, thoughtful, creative work, Joshua was chosen to lead the design of the new Amelicor branding. His design sensibilities—clean, modern, approachable—helped move the dairy division into a new era.
The Transitional Piece (2020) — A Bridge Between Eras
In 2020, Joshua created a Christmas illustration that marked a noticeable shift in the direction of the series. While still rooted in the familiar silhouette style of previous years, this piece introduced a new level of personality that stood apart from everything before it.
But before that published 2020 image emerged, there was another version.
Like he often does, Joshua first sent a humorous draft—a cow wearing a face mask, a subtle nod to the global pandemic that shaped everyday life that year. It wasn’t a version he ever intended to publish; it was simply part of his creative process. Joshua has a habit of sharing something funny or unexpected before settling into the more polished, final direction. In 2020, the masked cow was that moment of levity.
For the final version, the cow, traditionally a small figure within a wider Christmas scene, became the central character for the first time. Positioned close to the viewer and holding a candy cane, the cow’s expression felt curious, warm, and almost playful—an unmistakable departure from the quiet, symbolic silhouettes of earlier years. It was the first time the cow wasn’t simply part of the landscape.
Yet Joshua maintained enough of the original style to preserve its lineage.
- Silhouetted trees still framed the scene.
- A gradient winter sky rose above the horizon.
- The familiar black banner wrapped around the artwork just as it had for years.
It felt like the silhouette series, but also something more.
Interestingly, this transitional piece is Joshua’s least favorite of the entire collection. Like many artists, he’s often most critical of the work created in moments of change—those pieces that sit between styles tend to reveal the growing pains of artistic evolution.
But from an outside perspective, that is precisely what makes the 2020 illustration meaningful. It stands as the hinge between two eras, quietly signaling the direction the series was about to take.
The Illustrated Realism / Storybook Series (2021–Present)
After the transitional piece of 2020, Joshua entered a new creative phase that reshaped the Christmas cow tradition. Beginning in 2021, the illustrations became richer and more detailed. The cows in this era stepped forward as the main subject. No longer silhouettes or small elements within a broader scene, they became the emotional center of each illustration. Joshua introduced:
- Soft shading and highlights to create depth
- Detailed facial features that conveyed curiosity, calmness, or wonder
- Complex lighting effects, often using warm lanterns or window glow
- Layered winter landscapes, adding atmosphere and dimension
The transition from flat silhouettes to dimensional illustration felt almost like moving from a simple greeting card to the pages of a beautifully illustrated children’s book. Each image in this series does more than depict a Christmas moment—it invites the viewer into a narrative.
Behind the Scenes — Joshua’s Creative Process
Although Joshua’s Christmas illustrations arrive each year looking effortless and fully realized, the creative journey behind them is anything but simple. His process blends humor, imagination, technical skill, and a surprisingly philosophical approach to visual storytelling.
A Creative Mind that Sees Two Worlds at Once
Joshua describes his method as a kind of mental split-screen—holding two unrelated ideas in his mind and finding ways to bring them together.
As he explains:
“I try to think of a scene for Christmas on an old dairy, then I imagine what a cow would do if it could think like a human. Or I try to combine the two ideas of a familiar Christmas situation and incorporate cows. The creativity comes from trying to combine two totally different ideas. It’s a method named after Janus, the Greek god who had two faces to see two things at once.”
This dual-idea approach is the foundation of the Christmas cow series: the intersection of the familiar world of dairies and the timeless imagery of Christmas.
Humor as Part of the Process
Those who work closely with Joshua know that creativity and humor are inseparable for him. Before landing on the final idea, he often sends playful drafts—jokes in visual form. The masked cow he shared in 2020 is one example, a moment of levity during a difficult year. These humorous sketches aren’t meant to be published; they’re part of how he warms up creatively, exploring the edges of an idea before settling on the version that will ultimately represent Amelicor.
From Sketch to Story
Once Joshua identifies the concept, the real creative work begins. He sketches the scene—sometimes loosely, sometimes in detail—because that’s where, as he puts it, “the creativity really happens.” The sketching phase is where characters gain expression, where lighting and composition begin to take shape, and where the emotion of the piece emerges.
From there, he moves into Adobe Illustrator to build the final artwork.
Earlier in the series, Joshua focused on simplifying images—reducing scenes to silhouettes and essential shapes. In recent years, he has moved in the opposite direction, adding detail back in, enriching lighting, textures, and atmosphere as the storybook style emerged.
Conclusion — Looking Ahead
In an industry where people are known more for steady work than for spoken praise, feedback about the Christmas cow tradition often arrives quietly—an occasional comment at a conference, or a passing remark during a support call. Dairymen aren’t loud about these things, but they do notice. And when something isn’t well-received, they speak up. The absence of resistance, especially from employees who care deeply about how Amelicor presents itself, has been one of the strongest signs that Joshua’s work is valued and appreciated.
From my own vantage point, the meaning is unmistakable. I’ve always looked forward to Joshua’s illustrations—each one a small gift at the end of the year. Watching the series grow from simple silhouettes to richly detailed scenes has been a privilege. And this year’s artwork may be the most emotional yet: a lone cow standing in the quiet cold of a winter night, gazing with natural bovine curiosity into a window glowing with warmth and light. If you look closely, you can see her reflection in the glass—a small but powerful detail that makes the moment feel intimate, as though she’s studying the scene and wondering about the life unfolding just beyond the pane. Cows are, by nature, incredibly curious and emotionally aware—something our late friend Dr. Scott Tripp often reminded us of as he shared stories of his favorite cows and their surprising intelligence. That spirit of curiosity is captured beautifully here. We cannot see the people inside, but we can feel their presence—the fire, the gathering, the shared humanity implied by the golden light spilling into the darkness. It is a scene that speaks to connection, warmth, and the quiet wonder found in even the simplest moments.
