EVENT MAILER Leah Walters | Typography 1 | Fall 2014
Brainstorming I began this project without deciding on a specific event to tackle. Instead I focused on form and came up with three different event mailer styles that I could pursue. One opened up and enclosed a “Happy New Year� banner. The second was a packet of postcards, and the third a brochure-folded poster. The third idea lent itself to the 80/35 event and I liked the idea of designing a keepsake poster that recipients could hang on to.
Designing The poster invitation gave me a lot real estate to design on. I had to layout two sides–one a full-page poster and the other an unfolding mailer with the event details. I decided to change the fold on my mailer from my original rectangular mock-up to a square. I thought it felt more like an invite and would stand out in the mail better. I then folded a prototype on blank paper and used it as guide while I played with information hierarchy and set up my InDesign document.
For inspiration I checked out 80-35’s website and Flickr page. Their event last year was space themed and their website was filled with illustrations of spacemen and aliens. I didn’t mind the idea of intergalactic design, but I wanted the poster to be more widely appealing, so I toned it down and used subtle design elements like a dark, speckled background and circles to allude to outerspace. I pulled all of my images from the Flickr page and ended up with a great variety.
Refining I got good feedback on my first prototype, but I realized I needed to make the red text stand out more on the dark background.
When I finished tweaking the design, I printed my first of two proofs. The edges got cut off by the printer and I realized I needed to scale to fit to avoid that issue. Before I printed a second proof I decided to change the typography on the poster because the combination of outlined text and filled text felt too busy.
Final
Final I printed the first copy of my final event mailer on a smooth, shimmery piece of paper. It looked beautiful and caught blue hues in the light. It added to the galaxy-feel of the invite and would certainly have enticed a recipient. However I found that when I folded the poster with a bone folder, I ended up with unattractive cracking marks along the creases. I decided the paper was too heavy and printed my second invite on a lighter-weight sheet of paper.