4 Simple Steps to take Before Ordering the Perfect Grad Announcement
It’s that time of year again…. First comes Prom, then comes the Grad Party… and parents are still in a state of shock and denial at the end of an era. Let experts help you with the heavy lifting of the planning. At The Imagery, we can help with a few of your to-do list items, starting with the Graduation Announcement/Party Invitation.
Step 1. Plan the date. Choosing the perfect date and time takes a little prior research. Start the process of asking when other friends are having their party, and choose a date and/or time that is less popular. In our experience, the busiest party-going times will be the days immediately prior to and following graduation, but you can reserve those for immediate out-of-town guests, and have your big shing-dig on a day when more friends are able to attend your celebration.
Try a Sunday afternoon, or Thursday evening if sticking to Commencement week, or, the weekend of Memorial Day, or the weekend prior to Fourth of July for some alternate dates that are further away from the actual Commencement. If you don’t want a lot of people at your party for long periods of time, you could use the opposite strategy, and book a busy date/time, thus insuring that you will have kids stopping in and out for about 15-20 mins before leaving for the next gig. The problem with the later strategy is that your own child may want to attend all those parties as well, leaving mom and dad as the hosts and the guest of honor missing.
Step 2. Plan the details. By details, in terms of creating the perfect invitation, we mean that all good parties have some sort of theme…Whether it starts with the type of food, or starts with the school colors, figure out what the décor and feeling of the party will be, and that can be carried through in your invitation. When you take the time to do this step, you are able to build excitement and interest in the event beyond just “date/time/place”… Give your guests a hint of some of the fun details that you are putting together!
Step 3. Pick the photos you want on your card. OK, this may seem obvious; you are having us design the card because you want to use one of their Senior Pictures, but which picture? Here are a five quick questions to ask yourself when going through your favorite senior photos.
1) Does your senior want a baby photo or first day of school photo included for a “now and then” look?
2) Is the party going to be primarily outside or inside and maybe match the photo to that look?
3) Is the party casual or formal and match the photo to that look?
4) Do you want a variety of expressions on the card showing your senior’s serious side to humorous side and in-between? (we suggest no more than 4 photos on either side of your card, after that they can get too small and the card is too busy.
5) Are they active in a particular activity and you want to include an action photo or senior photo that expresses how they have excelled and grown in their extra curricular interests?
Once you have narrowed down your favorites, ask the senior to pick from those (not the other way around, you pick first, then the senior… since the majority of printed and mailed cards will be friends and family of the parent, and the HS senior will be most likely be designing something on their own for social media. The process will be faster if you can narrow down to the photos that you would be happy with if they picked them for their card.
Step 4. Decide to design on your own, or call us for help. If you own the photo-copyright, you can upload it on your own to various on-line card stores that have templates to choose from. If you have not yet purchased copyright, you can still call us to make the purchase over the phone, and we will email you a retouched file that is print-ready, along with written permission to have the image uploaded to a design site of your choosing.
However, having us do the design work for you has many time-saving advantages. With us, the templates that you like online can be used as inspiration, and re-worked to fit your photos. We can design to match everything to your theme and style. Call our studio for a design appointment. 952-890-7640. With all the information in steps 1-3 decided, you can now hand the information over to The Imagery to match the design to the look of your photos and the theme of your party.
If you’d like the best of both worlds, you can bring in ideas found on the internet to the Imagery design team, and they can adapt that look to match your photos perfectly…. Can’t find anything you like online? No problem. We specialized in customized cards to fit your ideas. All cards are emailed to you first for proofing, before we send them to print, so you are rest assured that the design will be something you love.
