Our Holiday Party - Save the Date Design

Our very sane event planners at the Kapor Center 543 long ago figured out that the right time for an office holiday party is, in fact, well after the holidays, in January. During the chaos of December, as everyone is putting the wrapping up their travel plans, decorations and gift shopping, it's a blessing not to have to add another event to the calendar, and certainly must make the event planning easier.

Our Save-the-Date and invite for the event are both being distributed digitally, which leaves room to play with the design in a way that might look awkward in print. This year, the party is a '20s themed casino night, and we wanted the invites to allude to that theme without being too on-the-nose, so I used a paper cutout look with sihlouetted shapes signifying the fashion of the period. The texture on the "paper" is taken from a scanned sheet of construction paper, which, when combined with the text, set to the Color Burn blending mode (which darkens and saturates), gives the text a screenprinted feel. Finally, I put the paper on top of a rich ornate wallpaper background from a texture pack from Valenia.org and lighted the scene a la the dramatic opening credits of an old film.