I freely hold my hands up and say that I don’t have an ounce of creativity in me, and usually I’m reaching for a pack of pre-designed invites when organising a party.
However, with more time on my hands thanks to lockdown and a lot of jealousy-inducing social media examples, I thought I’d have a go at designing my own. My son’s class is moving from infant school to junior school in September, and they’ve not been all together since March so we’re throwing an online leavers party. I (foolishly) put my hand up for invitations and logistics, surely that’s got to be easier than working out how to entertain thirty seven year olds, right?
How did it go?
And actually, surprisingly it was! OK I’m not going to be winning any design awards but I think it’s not a bad effort. A big bonus for me was using the freebies fonts on Font Bundles. The process is really simple, you create an account (or link your Facebook account) and then you’re good to go. There’s a whole host of free fonts to choose from and you can narrow your search or browse all of them. Once you’ve chosen, you download a zip file which includes an otf. and ttf. file for each font as well as the licence conditions and an FAQ file.
Being a bit of a technophobe I found that I was a bit unsure what to do at first, but the FAQ document explains how to use the font files in different design programmes. I imported mine into Photoshop and then used that to create my invitation.
What did I use?
I started out using the Sausages font, and then I started feeling adventurous so included the Arigato too. I think it gives a more professional feel to the invite than just using one font. I used a background image from Google Images, making sure I checked for any copyright restrictions.
If you’re looking for something that’s even more special, how about a fancy font? There’s stacks to choose from and there’s plenty of choice for weddings, baby showers, parties and beyond. The pictures of the fonts are brilliant for giving you inspiration too!
When you’re designing your own invite, don’t forget to include these five key pieces of information:
who – who’s hosting the party or who is it being thrown for? For a child’s birthday party, also include the contact name and number for a parent (avoids any unnecessary messages addressed to ‘Daniel’s Mum’)
why – make sure the design and the wording of the invite tells the guest why you are throwing the party, including the age if it’s for a child or milestone birthday
what – tell the guests if there are any special activities involved or if they need to bring anything in particular (the classic ‘bring socks for soft play’)
when – be very clear on the date and time, including the start and end time for a children’s party!
where – the location of the party, plus any special instructions around entrance or parking
It also works really well to establish the theme of the party on the invite too. For example, if you’re having a ‘touch the pets’ session at a children’s party then feature some animals on the invites.
*This is a sponsored post. Featured photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash