Hey guys, today, we will take a look at a very awesome project that I worked on. This is a collaborative effort between myself and two good friends, Cat Vo and Alan Ferran. The Eiffel Society logos are done by Ness Higson of I Am Always Hungry. Everything was assembled by the Think Tank crew and friends. Hit the jump to read more.
The invites consist of:
- An invitation/RSVP/Thank You sheet (printed on both sides).
- Eiffel Society logo and symbols screened on canvas.
- An amber glass bottle with a gold label wrapped around it. The bottle measures a little under 6 inches.
The final product was a result of hours of non-stop brainstorming and research (more or less, ha!). We had a set budget so we had to be wary of what materials to use. The end result was a very simple, presentable, practical, and portable (AND perhaps affordable) design. Nothing too fancy or flashy.
A mock up.
The gold labels that will wrap around the bottles. You can also see the printed canvas in the background. The labels were initially a pain to put on without forming air bubbles. Labels were made using a plotter.
Here are some pictures of the finished product. Roughly 200 were given out (or was it 400? I forget). I, myself, didn’t get a hold of one until after the grand opening haha.
The rolled canvas was attached to the invite sheet on purpose just in case the invite gets stuck in the bottle. Now that I look at it, it seems a bit unlikely that it’ll happen but, it does give it a visual flair.
The LVX logo at the top right. This represents “The LVX League”, the developers of Eiffel Society. Literally, it means “the light of creation” or “Life, Light, and Love”.
Making the Eiffel Tower shape was easy but to get everyone’s name on there without making it look bunched up and crowded in any area of the shape was a challenge. If there’s a spot where all the names bunch up, it creates a focal point. The only part that should really stand out are the investors. Their names are bolded and in black, towards the top of the tower. The other important names are just bolded and in gray. The rest of the names are in normal text weight and gray.
Since there were many different names at different lengths, I had to move a lot of the text around and swapping shorter names with longer ones depending how much space their name fills up. I didn’t want to change the size of the text too much so that was another hurdle to tackle. The smallest size hovered around 5pt or 6pt. I was taught that you shouldn’t really go below 8pt so I was a bit worried how the text will print out at such a small size. As you can see, it came out just fine but it’s not something I would recommend for everyday design. Very simple design but a pain to have everything evenly spread out.
Can you spot my name?
Some extra notes:
We originally came up with the idea to roll up a strip of 2″ paper of some sort. The invitation info will be revealed (in one line) as you roll it out. A cylinder peg would be attached to the end of the strip. We also knocked around the idea to stain the invitation sheet with coffee or coke to give it that “stressed” look but decided it would take too much work and time. Before the amber bottle was decided, we were going to use some test tubes or vials with a cork attached on top. The invites will be rolled up with a ribbon with part of the ribbon hanging outside of the bottle. The original plan didn’t pan out but the idea is still there on the final product.
If you’re in New Orleans, please check out the new place. It’s very classy and the interior art pieces are really awesome. My favorite has to be the many different light bulbs that hang in the center of the venue. Even though they all come in different shapes and sizes, they all glow in unison (in intensity and color). Also, throw in the awesome jazz band, and you got the perfect place to spend your night. There’s also after-hours on Saturdays.
Eiffel Society is located at 2040 St. Charles Ave, New Orleans, LA 70130.
You can also visit the website at eiffelsociety.com/