Finished!

Gah. These took me forever. I only did 30... but the gluing, cutting, printing, stamping, and numerous trips to Paper-Source consumed most of my time.

I did a little blue & gold color theme... lined the envelopes with the same paper I used for the outside of the card. Used a gold stamp for the inside of the card and outside of the envelope... navy blue ribbon to keep it closed, used some UCB seals to close the envelope.

Many hours over lots of weekends... but finalllllyyyy... I can send them off.

Yay!

My lovely little announcement! :D

GRADUATION, ARGH!

So, I finally found some time to post!

+ There's Papyrus on Northside that has lots of pretty feeling paper. I used to go in there and touch the paper and stationery in my free time. And no, that's not lame at all. :P

+As far as fonts, for as long as I can remember, I've used dafont.com for all my free fonts! There are so many. It's hard to choose unless I have an idea of what kind of feel the announcements are going to have. I like a lot of these calligraphy fonts. Bah, so many to go through. What kind of feel are we going for with the announcements?

+ Copy. I've been looking on sites and stuff that do announcements. Seems the essential information for all of them is:

• Graduate's name
  
• University name
• Degree (Bachelor of Arts/Sciences...)
• Major(s)
• Date of graduation
• Location of graduation & time

Using an online form, this is a sample copy of what might be inside:

The Chancellor, the Faculty
and
The Graduating Class
of
The University of California, Berkeley
Announce the Graduation of
Amy Sumie Hanoa
on
Friday, the Twenty-Second of May
Two Thousand Nine
with a
Bachelor of Arts Degree in
Mass Communications
Commencement Ceremonies will be held at
The Hearst Greek Theatre

But that's just one option. Any other ideas for copy?

Welcome, Designers: Purpose and Outlines

Hello everyone! Welcome to the design blog for our graduation announcement. First of all, CONGRATULATIONS everyone! For making it all the way through. Yay! I can't believe it's been 4 years. Anyway, straight to business...

I guess I'll use this first post to outline some things that we may want to address and discuss.

First of all: what is a graduation announcement? Kim put it very well.

Ohhhh or is the thing where you merely announce your graduation in hopes that they'll give you money? But you're not actually inviting them to the graduation?

So there it is. It's a pretty piece of paper you mail to relatives that you may or may not have met to ask for money. Cait and I thought it'd be a fun project. Cal Student Store is selling them at 10 for $19.99 with a more than likely limit on how much you must purchase. That's pretty much a rip off for what it actually is. Anyway, we want to use this blog as a forum to discuss the following:

- What does a graduation announcement contain? That is, both content and material (paper, envelope, cellophane????? RIBBON???? MAYBE??)
- <3 <3 <3 pretty paper
- So speaking of paper... we need to figure out where we can find papers and what the average cost is. And how much we need. However we would probably need to physically visit a store to touch the paper.
- Some online inspiration... other people's announcement? Wedding invitation? Or in general good mailing material design?
- Appropriate fonts. Let's share those good free font sites!
- Printing method. Our own inkjet/laser printer? Kinko's? Printing company?
- Should we use store-bought envelope or should we make our own? I have these envelope stencils so it's very easy!

Keep the ideas flowing! Design on!!

NC