3thought was honored to again have the opportunity to create the event identity for the Kristen Ann Carr Fund’s premier annual event. Every year, the visuals of “A Night to Remember” get re-invented to mirror the interests and personality of the honorees. The 2011 Honorees, Lisa and Greg Linn, expressed a desire for the pieces to have a contemporary, artistic feel; be inspired by “jazz;” and remind people that is a really fun-filled evening.

We hit upon the general aesthetic and color palette early, but the final elements took a while to get just right. The final identity was centered around a multi-layered, hand-drawn illustration created by Shea mixed with bold paint splats that were balanced with quiet space and contemporary, clean typefaces. This created an energetic and joyful visual to build all the necessary promotion pieces.

The first was the event poster (shown above), and this doubled as a unique invitation. The invitation was printed on the back side of the poster that was then folded down in 6 panels for mailing. Other components included a response card, envelopes, email save the date, silent auction/event guide brochure, tote bag and souvenir t-shirt (shown below).

The final and most in-depth piece created was the event journal which is an 84-page program book. The book includes organization and event information, as well as advertisements for all event sponsors. Unlike many events where most of the supporters are corporate sponsors, many of these ads are personal messages of support from individuals who know the honorees and organization members. Since the ad content was not coming as finished art from professional marketing departments, layouts had to be built for these special ads that both worked as part of the overall book, but still reflected the the personal nature of each message. The final book consists of a full color cover, black and white editorial pages, and three special 2-color sections for upper level sponsors. You can flip through the complete layout below.

To learn more about the Kristen Ann Carr Fund and all they do for sarcoma research, please visit: sarcoma.com. “A Night to Remember” is managed by Empire Events Group.

If you are an event planner who would like to develop a comprehensive visual identity for one of your upcoming events, please drop us a line with our contact form >

The story of how 3thought and Brewster Productions connected actually goes back to twitter in 2009. At the time, twitter was relatively new and definitely not as popular as it is today. Seeing as we were all tweeting from the Plymouth area, and both relatively new startups we formed an online connection and after a few tweets back and forth, we agreed to help support each other. Even if that support was just as simple as spreading the word via social channels and putting a link to each other’s website on our own sites. Pretty grassroots stuff.

We really enjoy posters and poster design, and earlier this spring we reached out to Jon about possibly helping with a poster. Jon agreed to let us help, and provided some information for this year’s Acoustic Nights Free Concert Series. As far as aesthetics goes, Jon just said it would be nice to have a red poster. Other than that, we had full creative freedom and this is what we came up with.

The poster is 11×17 format and all of the graphics are completely hand drawn. If you’d like to hire 3thought to create a poster for your event please drop us a line.

To learn more about Brewster Production’s Acoustic Nights Free Concert Series and all their concerts and services on their website!

Shows start at 6pm on the Hedge House Lawn in Plymouth, MA and are completely FREE.

We have had the pleasure of working with Michelle and her team at the Academy for several years now, and every year is a new challenge to create an impactful and memorable invitation. We developed this tri-fold, self-mailing format as a means to minimize costs while still maintaining a high end feel.

Keeping our audience in mind, the design of the 2011 invitation was inspired by the designs of silk tie. The detailed pattern and bold stripes create drama, while the clean typographic treatments keep it “classy.” The invite is printed in 1 color with a spot gloss varnish to add panache and depth.

To engage student athletes with the newly launched Devlin S-AFE Program, the Boston College Life Skills Department turned to 3thought. The task was to create a piece that would stand out from mounds of papers these young athletes receive as part of their collegiate experience. The Life Skills team wanted the piece to feel very personal and have an emotional point of contact, but at the same time, it needed to scream “Open Me.”

3thought concepted several potential formats, but settled on this 5.5 x 8.5 in roll fold format because of it’s approachability. The small size instantly creates a sense of intimacy. We added the dramatic die cut cover for the “wow” factor and reinforce the brand of the BC Eagles. The remainder of the interior was imprinted with a warm tone,  paper texture to keep the piece feeling soft and personal.

The feature panel of the entire brochure is first panel revealed when the die cut cover is lifted. The Life Skills team felt that his Ghandi quote perfectly summarized the mission of the program and the college. A carefully crafted collage of student athletes participating in community service fills the letters and reinforces the message.

The multitude of participants was juxtaposed with a full bleed photo on the next panel to show that one can make a difference, and further deepening the layers of messaging the brochure delivers.

In the end, this seemingly simple piece is one that both 3thought and the Life Skills team is very proud.

If you’re a Boston College Student and interested in learning more or getting involved with the Devlin S-AFE Progam, please contact Alison Quandt; Director of the Life Skills Program at Boston College at 617-552-1784.

Project Background: Again this fall, Boston College approached 3thought to design their annual football camp brochure. It’s a project Matt’s worked on the last 4 years and one of 3thoughts favorite and most recognizable projects. Each year we really push ourselves to do something different and step up our efforts from the year before, and with the help of the team, this year’s project was no exception.

Concept: 3thought met with the team to discuss themes for this years camp. The target audience for this brochure is high school age boys who play football, so we all knew we wanted something that spoke to your typical teenage boy. Two rough ideas (seen above) were sketched up and presented to Boston College. The first concept was entitled “Champions are built here” and included images of a factory with players being built. The second concept was the idea of video game packaging with the theme of stepping up your game throughout. The hugely popular EA sports Madden franchise would serve as the inspiration for this concept. In the end, Boston College liked both ideas, but chose to go with the video game theme.

Design: 3thought worked with Boston College to gather images of all current BC Alumni in the NFL, as well as schedules, bowls, team facts and information about the camp. The difficult part  for us was finding a way to integrate all of this content and carry it through the brochure while maintaining the feeling of a video game. We decided to make the front and back sides look like an actual package. We chose Matt Ryan who’s arguably BC’s most popular current NFL player and we also chose Ron Brace who’s a local guy playing for the local team. Important information about the camp was added to the back page similar to where you’d find information on an actual game package. For the interior we tried to make something that looked like what you might see on a screen as you were playing. The dates and schedule were worked into the interface and actual photos of players were cut our and slightly pixelated and added placed on the field at BC’s Alumni Stadium. We also created the supplemental registration/application sheets and used recent grad and last year’s Superbowl champion Jolon Dunbar as the highlighted player.

Visit the BC Eagles Homepage

Download the Brochure

Download the Application