Less Effort, Twice the Success

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.