Whether you’re organising a high profile event, corporate function or charity ball, every person on your invite list deserves to be informed and inspired by the invitation you send them. Put simply, a successful invitation design should make your event impossible to resist.
Below is a list of useful tips to think about before you commission your event invitation.
1) We all judge a book by its cover
We live in a visual world and we all ‘judge a book by its cover’. A well designed invitation is a call to action to your clients, colleagues or friends (and you may only have only a few seconds to attract their attention). So, think laterally, use mind maps and create roughs on paper to generate innovative ideas before you decide on your final design idea. Everyone has some potential to be creative (whether they want to access that part of themselves or not).
2) Know your audience
a) Consider: Who are you targeting with your design?
b) Then think again. Have you typecast the people you’re targeting? Can you credit them with more creative understanding? Simply because you might be sending your invite to a host of clients for a corporate event does not mean your clients only think in ‘corporate terms’, twee it may be, but every client is a person, so don’t be afraid to try and hit other emotional buttons.
3) Consider your time and budget before you begin
If you only have a limited time-frame to get your invitation ready, don’t imagine you can be the next Picasso of invitation design. An effective design should work within the time and budget limitations imposed on the project. This however should not stop you from working hard to make sure your invitation is still as creative and innovative as possible.
4) Legibility and typography
Consider the size of type and images that you are you going to use carefully for headers, body copy, RSVP notes and any other information you may wish to include on your invite. There is no use bellowing out how amazing an event is going to be if the client can’t easily read the date and location of where they are supposed to be.
As a rule of thumb never use more than 2 typefaces in any piece of communication. Often even 1 typeface (in its varying weights) is more than enough.
Likewise, try and consider the amount of words you put on a line. Too many words per line tend to get difficult on the eye to read. So don’t be afraid to go on to more than one line for the sake of a better design.
5) The K.I.S.S. rule
Try to keep your communication to a minimum. If a line of type can be edited out, do it. There’s no use over crowding your invitation with text or images when a few simple lines and a single image can capture the same idea. Don’t over complicate your idea. An old (but often repeated) adage within the advertising and design world is follow the ‘K.I.S.S. rule’ (Keep It Simple Stupid).
6) Choose your printer wisely and always read the small print…
Sometimes a good design can be made great by sourcing the right paper stock or by selecting the right print finish. The opposite is also true. A good design can be ruined by poor printing and poor colour output. In order to make sure your print run is as you would expect from a creative perspective, make sure you choose your printer, look at their previous work and make sure the quality they produce equates to the quality of finish you’re looking for. Likewise, make sure you receive a ‘print proof’ to check and approve along with your design agency. Any last minute text, image or colour changes can then be checked before your final print run (doing this will inevitably save you a lot of extra expense and unnecessary panic).
If you’d like any more invitation design advice or to see some samples that Mavo Studio have created feel free to get in touch.
