Create Event Invitations That Stand Out

If you are organising any kind of event, be it a personal celebration or a corporate function, you will want to ensure that you do whatever you can to encourage your invited guests to attend! The first your guests will likely know of your planned event is the invitation they receive – so it is important to ensure that the invitations themselves ‘catch the eye’ and make your event appear attractive and interesting. Here are some tips for designing invitations that will excite the recipients and have them counting down the days to your event:

Establish Your Target Audience

The first thing to establish before planning your event invite design is the target audience with which you want to share your invite – you need to know who you are inviting and what their expectations of the event may be! Is it a formal celebratory event – perhaps a wedding or an anniversary of some kind that may involve formal sit-down dining – or is it a more casual event such as a birthday that takes the form of a party, or is it a business or corporate event? Will there be a theme to the event and what impression do you want your invite to have on the recipients? Establishing your audience will dictate the design, format, and tone of your event invite and allow you to tailor your invite to meet the expectations of your identified guests.

Create a Format

Once you have identified your target audience you can set about formatting your design and layout of the invite – consider the size, the material, the print style and images, if any, you are going to incorporate into your design. Do you want your invite to be a single card and, if so, do you want it printed front and back or just on the one side – would a folded brochure, or even a booklet, be a better option for the event? Consider how big you want your invite to be, and the sort of paper or card quality is best suited, and which font and typography will look the most appropriate to best relay your message. If you are to include images on the invite, then consider which graphics or photographs you will need – but always ensure the quality of any images used is of high-resolution and will reproduce well on your chosen paper or card!

Create A Hierarchy

The main purpose of any event invitation is to inform the recipient of the event details – an effective invitation design will display a clear and logical hierarchy of information.  The main elements should catch the attention of the reader immediately – details such as the name, date, time and location of the event should take priority – make these details stand-out in your design. The use of different-sized lettering, and perhaps contrasting font lettering colours, will create an interesting contrast and emphasise the important detail to the reader.

Personalise

As well as catering for your identified audience, you may want to consider ‘stamping’ something of your own personality on your invite – aspects that emphasise your individuality and style whilst also ‘setting the mood and atmosphere’ for the upcoming event.  This is where your use of imagery and graphics can play a role – if it is a corporate event, then your company logo and colours would be appropriate – or if you wanted to add some personal taste and flair to the invite, then including different shapes, colour contrasts or patterns can create appeal and interest. Be wary though of ‘doing too much’ – you don’t want your design to be too crowded or cluttered that it makes difficult reading – often a simple, high-quality elegance will be best suited to the occasion!

Proofread

Creating an attractive, interesting and effective design for your invite is all well and good – but can be rendered completely moot if not properly and professionally printed. Spelling mistakes, or poor punctuation and grammar, can spoil a well-intentioned and designed invitation –

ALWAYS proofread your finished design – ensure all the grammatical aspects are correct and double-check that the event detail included in the invitation is correct – an invitation that is sent out with an incorrect date, time, or venue is not much use no matter how pretty it looks! It is always wise to get a sample print of your invitation before committing to a larger print-run – ensure the colours, images and typography look on paper exactly as you intended when initially designed – and an independent, ‘third-party’ opinion is always worth obtaining!

With careful planning, and a professional approach to quality, you can design and produce attractive and interesting invitations that your guests will be thrilled to receive and have them looking forward to attending your event.