How much fun was this?!? A lot is the answer… I was recommended to this client working as a VP with Activision (senior VP in charge or Guitar Hero) so I anticipated the awesome. It turns out, as an irredeemable Indiana Jones geek like myself, he had actually worked on Lucas’ Young Indiana Jones series before ending up at Activision but had continued to nurture a love of that series and the movies (although hopefully not Crystal Skull… egad).
Anyway, with his birthday coming up, he decided to throw himself an Indiana Jones themed bash replete with custom invites.
So it was, with my deep (and deeply unsettling) knowledge of the films I dove in head first creating a Save the Date card. I decided to style this after the Zeppelin tickets (Graf, not Led) from The Last Crusade and did a huge amount of research into the real ones from the 30s coming back with scans, original stamps and some of the basic fonts and layouts. I then adapted them, and redrew and illustrated most of them to fit the specific needs of the piece.
Next up was the main invite and RSVP package itself which I styled after Dr. Jones’ (dad, not son) diary. I made lots of sketches and drawings from the movie artifacts and styled the map to his house after the map to the Holy Grail. For the RSVP I came up with the attendance choices of:
Yes, we will be there to see the tapestries.
No, I chose poorly and cannot attend.
If you understand those two choices then you know.
All of this was scanned in and printed onto lined sheets and bound. Then, I used die cut sheets of SuedeTex by Fibremark to give the exterior a leathery feel. Everything was bound with butcher’s paper and tied up with rawhide string and twine and heavily weathered with coffee and dirt from the back yard before being sent off.
A last minute addition was a poster warning of proper expedition attire (basically a warning to the ladies not to wear high heels on the new wood floors).
And finally, I created a very simple Zeppelin icon for Thank You cards to be letterpressed.
What. A. Hoot!
