fbpx

 CHALLENGE

The invitation had to not only encapsulate all University of Cincinnati Foundation stands for and be accurately targeted to each individual recipient, it also had to garner enough attention for them to actually, well, save the date!

SOLUTION

Print Mail Save the Date Event for University by Oregon Printing Dayton Ohio

We knew we had to start with the carrier of the invitation.

We created a custom sleeve for the ‘Save the Date’ to slide into, printed on black cover stock in black ink and white ink. 

Unsurprisingly, at first, the black ink did not really show up on the black paper, so we had to experiment to find out how we’d achieve University of Cincinnati Foundation’s precise vision.

We found that if we printed white behind the black, our words then jumped off the sheet—almost like a gloss varnish on an uncoated black sheet (which is normally impossible). We then die-cut the sheet, and folded and glued it into a 5.5” x 8.5” sleeve that held the slightly smaller invitation card.

For the card itself, we needed something that would keep the “cool” factor going—we may have grabbed the recipient’s attention on a Saturday morning when they tear open the mail, but we haven’t yet convinced them why they should attend the event.

We took two sheets of textured stock and printed a simple invitation on one, using a solid red with some screened identity imagery in the background, plus a 200-year logo on the other. We glued the two sheets together, so it was a thick card the recipient could not ignore amidst the mess of papers on the counter.

To complement the invitation, and keep the experience of “cool” and “luxurious” going, we took a piece of translucent stock, printed it in solid red with a few words dropped out, and inserted both of those into the black sleeve.

This was the print job they were looking for. This would no doubt rival invitations from previous years. But there was one last thing to do to make this mailer stand out and make the impact our client wanted.

So we put the whole package in a custom clear cellophane envelope, applied an angle cut label along with a $1.00 first-class stamp, and ended up with something you just could not pass over when it arrived in your mailbox.

RESULTS

Print Mail Save the Date Event for University by Oregon Printing Dayton Ohio

The UC Foundation, that year, had more than twice as many recipients attend the event than they planned (of course, this was pre-COVID).

The team at UC did a phenomenal job with all the design, and we commend their openness to consult with our team along the way. OPC did all the printing, assembly, and mailing.

This is what collaboration means to us. This is our ideal partnership, where your results are our results, and your success is personal to us.

“Working with OPC was a breeze. They ran with our design and took care of all the messy mailing bits of the production process, and the invitation was beautiful. They even experimented to make our design take advantage of all their printers’ special capabilities. The event was practically overrun, but now we know who we’ll be turning to for the 201st Anniversary.”

— UC Foundation Fundraising Director

PROJECT GALLERY