Birthday Card 'Imani'
Announcement Birthday
Announcement Birthday
Birthday Card 'Imani'
For the birth of my first-born child Imani, I really wanted an original birthday annnouncement, as well by idea & concept as in use of material and execution of the work. I had 9 months to figure something out, so plenty of time – usually clients don't give you that amount of time for brainstorming – but as is often the case with personal jobs, this one also ended up 'more stressful' than intended... :-)
'The Big Idea' where everything came together, only arrived just within 2 months before 'D-Day'. At that moment I just had an idea, all research however was yet to be made. And as already mentioned, I wanted to use unconventional materials, which meant it probably wouldn't be simple to get my hands on it and keeping it budgetwise affordable. Finally, with birthdaycards you have to respect Mother Nature, so you really don't know for 100% what actually will be the exact birth day, which means you have to be ready at least a few weeks before the suspected date.
No longer wasting time, I went in higher gear to make the idea 'happen'. A postal parcel was the basic idea; it symbolizes the 'gift' a new-born child is in someone's life. Once this idea came up, the whole project developed within a few days. I used a variety of postal jargon ('handle with care', 'fragile', 'priority'...) to communicate birthdate, weight, the happy parents & grandparents, etc.
To make the birthday card a real 'package', I wanted to use corrugated cardboard. This would give the card 'thickness & body', without making it too heavy to send it. As expected, this was the real challenge in the whole production – indeed, you don't find corrugated cardboard in the range of a regular paper supplier. After a lot of websurfing, e-mails and phone calls, I finally found a box manufacturer who could provide me beautiful brown cardboard sheets. From the moment I got the sheets, I went straight to the silkscreen printer (only about 3 weeks were left before the suspected date...) to get them printed with the postal references. Finally, I could sleep again at night :-)
The whole package was finished with digitaly printed labels, which made the concept easily adaptable (in case a boy should arrived instead of the promised daughter :-)
So this was really a labour of love, and on top of it, my beautiful daughter Imani was born healthy, stealing my heart right away :-)
For the birth of my first-born child Imani, I really wanted an original birthday annnouncement, as well by idea & concept as in use of material and execution of the work. I had 9 months to figure something out, so plenty of time – usually clients don't give you that amount of time for brainstorming – but as is often the case with personal jobs, this one also ended up 'more stressful' than intended... :-)
'The Big Idea' where everything came together, only arrived just within 2 months before 'D-Day'. At that moment I just had an idea, all research however was yet to be made. And as already mentioned, I wanted to use unconventional materials, which meant it probably wouldn't be simple to get my hands on it and keeping it budgetwise affordable. Finally, with birthdaycards you have to respect Mother Nature, so you really don't know for 100% what actually will be the exact birth day, which means you have to be ready at least a few weeks before the suspected date.
No longer wasting time, I went in higher gear to make the idea 'happen'. A postal parcel was the basic idea; it symbolizes the 'gift' a new-born child is in someone's life. Once this idea came up, the whole project developed within a few days. I used a variety of postal jargon ('handle with care', 'fragile', 'priority'...) to communicate birthdate, weight, the happy parents & grandparents, etc.
To make the birthday card a real 'package', I wanted to use corrugated cardboard. This would give the card 'thickness & body', without making it too heavy to send it. As expected, this was the real challenge in the whole production – indeed, you don't find corrugated cardboard in the range of a regular paper supplier. After a lot of websurfing, e-mails and phone calls, I finally found a box manufacturer who could provide me beautiful brown cardboard sheets. From the moment I got the sheets, I went straight to the silkscreen printer (only about 3 weeks were left before the suspected date...) to get them printed with the postal references. Finally, I could sleep again at night :-)
The whole package was finished with digitaly printed labels, which made the concept easily adaptable (in case a boy should arrived instead of the promised daughter :-)
So this was really a labour of love, and on top of it, my beautiful daughter Imani was born healthy, stealing my heart right away :-)
