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 >

• Read More in the Patriot Ledger
• Learn More about the Event

Over the weekend of July 23 & 24, Shea and Matt attended WordCamp Boston 2011. This unique conference was held at George Sherman Union at Boston University. So, what is WordCamp?

“WordCamp is a conference that focuses on everything WordPress. WordCamps are informal, community-organized events that are put together by WordPress users like you. Everyone from casual users to core developers participate, share ideas, and get to know each other.” – WordCamp Central

3thought’s own website is build on the WordPress platform, and we have been building WordPress sites for others for over 2 years. We have found this user-friendly platform is a wonderful CMS for so many, especially small business websites. We wanted to attend so that we hone our skills and connect to other resources that could help our clients. But the event was so much more.

The schedule offered not only tips on the latest WordPress development tools, but also information on business, marketing, and strategies for a variety of goals.
The WordPress Community is welcoming and helpful, and extends from novice bloggers to hard-core developers. We met so many interesting people and look forward to developing those relationships in the future.

In addition to attending the event, 3thought was also invited to provide design services in the form of event signage (see above) and a unique event badge that also served as event schedule and venue map (image coming soon). It was a very fun project, and the 3thought team was happy to contribute to such a wonderful event.

If you are interested in learning more about WordCamp, we encourage you to check out the website.
The presentations are also available on Slideshare and coming soon to WordPress.tv

Thank you to all the organizers, speakers and participants!

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.

3thought worked closely with Dr. Sasha Carr to create the character and logo for her concept of “The BreakUp Coach.” The next step towards building the online community Dr. Carr envisioned was to design a website that would be the hub of all her future initiatives. The site needed to encompass her blog which she had already started on a separate platform, an advice column, e-mail based breakup counseling programs, and e-cards – and that was just the beginning.

3thought set out to create something that married well with the original character design developed and capture the playful, “girly” spirit that Dr. Carr wanted to portray on the site. We wanted a bold statement on the homepage that guided visitors to key actions to take on the site: Send a Card, Sign-Up for E-mail and Shop for Merch. The secondary actions (reading the blog & advice columns) are displayed at the bottom of the layout with a feature article and links to recent posts. The bold “jell bean” shapes carry throughout the site and create a casual, playful feeling.

The site was coded by TG Web Development, utilizing a custom CMS they developed just for this site. This allows each function to remain distinct and easily maintained by the client herself. We were able to import the BreakUp Coach’s previous blog articles so that the blog portion of the site would be fully populated at launch. We also build an article categorization system that would automatically update a grid of “jelly bean” navigation buttons. Further, we build an e-mail system that registers users and sends them personalized messages built off of a pre-determined curriculum of breakup advice.

Perhaps our favorite feature of the site involves the e-cards.

Here, we were able to let our inner-artist loose, creating custom illustrations for each card.

As not-fun as the end of the relationships are, we are sure that the breakup-coach.com website will bring a smile to a few faces.