With very limited budget and supplies, and having to put 100 invitations and programs together by-hand, I was able to come up with a creative solution. I had to figure out how to visualize cybercrime, the main topic of the conference. I created a mini police crime folder with Staples’ ivory cover stock, and plain copy paper for the mini pieces of paper inside. I stapled the “News Media Release” over the longer sheet of conference speaker bios in the invitation, and the same for the program’s schedule and speaker bios. In the invitation I left the hand-drawn map (with directions on the backside) loose so you could take it with you.

Invitation with map

program

I chose the fonts Handwritten-Dakota and American Typewriter to make it look like an authentic police letter, I even added a case number from the date. If you notice the “Victims” are IP addresses to relate it to cybercrime.

I think I just put in the craziest work week ever. I had to get programs ready for two events. And it’s not just the design files I had to worry about being ready on time, it was waiting on content, and then having to print them out from our laser printer and cut them out using my poor little hand and X-acto, and then putting them together.

I made 150 - 2 page - programs for the Annual Awards Dinner and 300 – 14 page programs for the Visualization of the World Symposium. I wanted to put in overtime to make sure they were finished on time, but by 5:00pm I was ready to pass out, from putting all of my energy into them.