Printwork coming together.

The programme's back from the wonderful Screaming Colour along with the sponsorship leaflets and menu. Looks good to me! Here's also a pic or two of the self-foiled invitations and the laser-cut paper I no longer have a use for....thinking about that one. Photos to follow.

Invitations - foiling the printers' evil plan

I wanted the event invitation cards silver foiled and embossed, but due to a whopping charge from several printers I followed Clare's advice and ordered some omnichrome - hit & miss laser printer transfer foil. Print your image, overly the foil sheet, heat it, and supposedly your image foils.

Tonight I invaded Kate's flat and took advantage of her, her laser printer and her laminator to get a few prototype invites done. Of course, when the date is set for the event and the client stumps up for the actual invitations they'll be properly foiled by a professional printers, but this is the best I can get with my budget and abilities.

Still, looks pretty good.

Below the photo shows the many, many test pieces made in advance of attempting The Real Thing. Pics of the final result when I have daylight to photograph them tomorrow.

Posters - Cinema 4D experiments

I want to create a series of posters using just the type I've drawn up for this project to go into the corridor leading to the main Amphitheatre bar, through which all the guests will be passing on their way to the reception part of the evening.
Crisp type against a full colour background has worked well up til this point but I've been playing with Cinema 4D with the help of someone more in-the-know about it than me and the 3D effects you can get with type are quite interesting:

Sign - progression

This almost definitely will NOT be ready for Tuesday, but it will most certainly be made for the show.
I pulled in a favour from a saintly former teacher to get this laser-cut from glossy black acrylic. Slight error: He works from a PC-based programme, so in the conversion it sadly lost the absolute flow of the curves, but the difference isn't overly noticeable. It's roughly A2 in size, although for a miniature mockup I've got an A4 copy. I cut a clear acrylic glaze for the front and reverse, and when they're sandwiched together they're high-shine and really smart.
This image shows it over a lightbox with flat lighting behind it...this would be the effect of lighting it with fluorescent tubes and then diffusing the glow.
Tonight going to experiment with the mirrored film and fairy lights (controlled twinkling effect) To be honest not entirely sure I want to bulk it up by sticking a box behind it to light it up. Will consider the options.

Lily article

Wrote the article myself since I had no working copy but to demonstrate how the celebrity features will be laid out. Still working on her headline but the layout's in place.

Thanks page options

Donations pages

Trying out the money box image and also playing with having a full-colour facing page.

Programme layout desicion

I think til this point I've been trying to use the calligraphic thing too much, so I'm now only using it for the individual elements of the event to which I've assigned a particular phrase...the dinner and the auction, for example.

I've written an editorial piece on the Home and laid it out in the simplest most attractive way I can, while using a simple stock image (not ideal but I chose it for its clarity and how it matches the dark-toned, simplistic style of the booklet). I used the C&C trademark pink sparingly while still keeping it in there as it's a key feature of the event brand.

Sign developments

After an ASTRONOMIC quote for an LED factory-built sign last week, my plan is now to make it myself. Exact technicalities yet to be finalised but I've doctored the logo for laser-cutting as follows:

1) This will be cut from glossy black acrylic and set behind a sheet of clear acrylic. 2) Onto this acrylic will be placed a layer of mirrored film. This ordinarily looks like an opaque reflective material but when a light is shone from behind it, it shows through as demonstrated crudely below.
3)This will probably have a second sheet on of clear perspex on top to protect it and keep it in place.
4) Behind the logo will be a small box containing an as-yet undecided light source. Tempted to just keep a clean fluorescent tube behind there with a pink filter but might experiment with fairy lights or an LED strip to see which is stronger.

Photographic ideas

The date of the event's been put all the way til September, so all the client's deadlines have lapsed completely. I've had to pretty much make up ALL the information on these pages, since I don't have the actual copy yet. So I've come up with a photographic solution to the problem of not having images for auction prizes, and these are the rough first draft results (type treatment not yet applied, working on it...)

Also put together an image for the Thank Yous that will close the event brochure. In discussion with Rock, they talked about black silhouetted dogs against the pink background...a bit of a vector nightmare. I thought high res photographs would work better, so I've sent them these for approval.

Studio photography

Lacking imagery for the programme I have to create some fairly last minute.

Creative writing
I've written an example list of potential auction prizes for the charity auction. I bought a selection of visually contrasting props representing a few of these pries and headed into the Chelsea studio to take images of the objects. Wanted them against a dark background so they'll be easier to work into a predominantly dark book.

One page has to thank everyone involved in the event. For this I drew up a Thank You card in the by now trademark style and photographed it against a fitting pink envelope.
The 'donations' page will be a tough one to make look good. The client suggested a bright pink piggy (or 'doggy') bank but to compromise I scoured London looking for a black example and took as many subtle photos of it as I could. With these the success of the page will depend on marriage of image and text.

E-mail from Rock Events

Using the ornamental typography designs over the use of the tiara design is fine with us. Ben is very pleased with the treatments that you have been sending over, so if you go with what features look better on the designs, that will be fine. Regarding printing the invites, if I were you I would go with the dummy date if you're needing to get this printed quickly.

This poses a problem...it's £470 to get fake invitations printed which will be defunct when the actual date is set. I could risk waiting til the meeting to see if a date is decided upon...if it is, there might be a way of getting it funded since the invitations will probably be used. If no date is set then I'll have to send the fake ones off anyway. Either way, sending off on Thursday means they might not get done in time for Tuesday 2nd. Headache.

Next meeting scheduled

On Thursday sitting down with Battersea & Rock Events to discuss next steps. Just sent Ben everything I've done so far excluding the programme work, since this is still far from completion.

I've been holding out on doing that, waiting for content from Rock and Battersea that still hasn't got to me. Therefore have to produce layouts for pages without knowing a thing about what they are to contain. Some facing pages will therefore need imagery to balance the text, so I'm overnight developing a backup plan. More tomorrow.

After speaking to Ben this evening had to last-minute knock up a presentation for Rock Events before we reconvene tomorrow, images from the PDF I put together here:

Invitation designs

Been working on the designs for the invitation (despite not having the date yet...best to be prepared...)

I want them to be very, very simple. To avoid overusing the logo I've designed a teaser phrase in the signature style to adorn the fronts of the invitations and for use in the programme.

Concept 1: single card invite, separate RSVP card
Spin's design for the HOV 'Mythologies' exhibition private view invite was just black board, with the exhibition logo laser etched into it and minimal screen-printed white text. I love this subtle effect, it's what I'm trying to implicate throughout the project (black/white/pink has huge potential to look brash and tacky so I'm trying really hard to keep everything as minimal as I can).

Considering having the phrase laser etched into a single piece of black board.
Alternatively, been looking at foil blocking. Gloss black foil black on matte black board would also be a subtle treatment. Imagine it to look something like:
Then again, the client might not appreciate the subtle treatment. Need to talk to a printer but it's probably possible to gloss-pink foil block (NOT metallic) the phrase onto board. Also the silver foil would make an impact.
For the reverse side I'm playing with a variety of layouts, all the while trying to stay completely minimal while remaining within the brand so far established.
A lot of these solutions rely on foil blocking so a lot will depend on what I learn from a couple of printers next week.

Concept 2: fold-out card, including RSVP card
Would need to be cut down from standard sizing, which will obviously hike up costing, but worth a go. In square format:
...and a B6 format.

Re-de-sign

I got a quote of £1,236 for the sign. Plus VAT. There is no way on earth I can afford this, especially with the print costs the project will incur, so I'm tweaking/completely reworking the design. LED solutions probably not going to cut it now so I'm working on something sleek and beautiful.

Sign update

Mike from SMP responded saying that my first designs were workable but might not read too clearly. He suggested I have the type cut from vinyl set onto the black acrylic, to help the mind link the bulbs up into text. Personally I reckon to put the vinyl letters on the face panel with the led's drilled through would enhance the sign. I don't think you need any more led's.That would probably look something like this:

Designs for preliminary 'save-the'date' email invite

Before the printed invites are distributed, Rock want to send out to prospective corporate clients a teaser email, stating the date and piquing the interest surrounding the event. These are the layout designs I've come up with, complete with another piece of original type crafted for the specific purpose.

(Click to enlarge...seem to have lost text clarity when I exported these as PNGs)

Clarifying intended outcomes

Meeting with Ben from Rock Events this week just to clarify more details.

Outline of intended final outcomes:

Definite
- Full colour prototype event 'kit' - event programme/booklet, place settings, wayfinding, menu cards
- Printed tickets and invitations, including packaging
- Illuminated sign for the show and potentially for use on site at the ROH
- 3 full colour A2 typographic posters for use at the event utilising trademark calligraphic style
- Visual evidence of how the identity will be used to brand the space as well as the associated printed media

Potential
- Photographic evidence of publicity material (alleged collaboration between Battersea/Rock Events/media to raise public interest in the event with outdoor promotions)
- DVD featuring: suggested extra modes of event publication

NB: Due to differing deadlines for me and Rock Events/Battersea, a lot of the info I need for some of the finer details of my project will not be available before I go to print. Therefore there might be a certain amount of informed 'creative writing' which will later be replaced with genuine copy from both me and from the press dept at Battersea.

Sign sketch to send to possible workshops

I've got a few businesses with whom to discuss realistic sign options with this week, and after bit of consideration I reckon the following will be what I start with.

The LEDS are set into laser-cut/drilled holes in glossy black acrylic (mocking it up in white, it looked slightly clinical) and ideally set up to flash in some sort of sequence. Over the top of this would be a mirrored translucent second sheet of acrylic, so that the logo is only clearly visible once the lights are on. Poorly-constructed diagram to visualise this here:

I mocked it up in a less traditional oval shape, but I'm not really feeling this one.

A friend of mine suggested a different treatment:
Ok, if you completely laser cut the persex or whatever material you used, you could have light shine directly through it. You'd need to slightly modify the text like i've very roughly done here! All the spaces in the letters and flourishes would need to be joined to the bulk of the sign. It probably wouldn't be too hard to have it so the light didn't shine out the edge of the sign if you didn't want that.

Like it but I think this would be more of a backup plan.

If anyone's got any suggestions or particularly strong opinions for/against these, it'd be great to hear your feedback!