DESCRIPTION Bodkin Invitation CLIENT Bodkin DATE January – February, 2009 DESIGN CREDITS Roanne Adams Creative Direction: Roanne Adams Design: Cynthia Ratsabouth PRINT CREDITS Focal Print TYPE CREDITS Bodoni FLF Trade Gothic

QUANTITY PRODUCED 250 PRODUCTION TIME 5 Days DIMENSIONS: WIDTH × HEIGHT × DEPTH 11.6 in × 12 in PRINT METHOD Offset PAPER STOCK Enviro, 80 lb Cover, Uncoated NUMBER OF COLORS 1 spot (Black)

As part of a larger project for Bodkin, a women’s clothing collection by designer Eviana Hartman, that included a look book, event and photography art direction the team at New York based Roanne Adams created a pretty funky invitation for an important event. Here is the concept.

We chose to have the Bodkin Autumn/Winter ‘09 presentation at the Horticultural Society of New York. This location helped dictate the idea of sending out air plants to the attendees. Once that was decided we needed to create an invitation that could serve other purpose besides just inviting people, so we decided to create a container for the plant to be delivered in.

The concept for the invitation design came from various places ranging from the location of the presentation, Eviana’s sustainability ideologies, and her design influences, specifically geometry and architect Buckminster Fuller. Thus, the reason why we chose to have the invitation arrive in the form of a 100% post consumer tetrahedron containing an air plant with care instructions.

At first I had been attracted to this invitation by the nice typography, and odd shape of the invitation, but the concept and execution really brings this together and I can very well see people putting together the tetrahedron and caring for their air plant. I know I would, and I’m not the kind of guy that takes care of air plants.

It’s unique in that the invitation took on multiple uses and encompassed a few different layers of ideas. It was a container for a plant as well as a special geometric shape that emphasized the name behind the line — Bodkin is a dagger, hairpin, or sharp, slender instrument used for making holes in cloth. The invite was produced locally with 100% post-consumer recycled paper and eco-friendly inks.

And, of course, things get more complicated when you involve flora in your design specs.

It was quite challenging to get an eco-friendly printer to print a complicated shape in the extremely tight turn around & budget that we had. We were really nervous about the paper weight, we thought that if the paper was too thick it would be hard to fold into a tetrahedron but if it was too light it wouldn’t be strong enough to hold the air plant. We were also a bit concerned about the timing of the air plants. We ordered 200 air plants to arrive around the date that the printing would be complete. Although it was a risky design, everything seemed to turn out perfectly.