Creative Design Ideas for Invitation Cards

Designing invitation cards is a fun yet challenging process for many graphic designers. The reason is that, unlike many marketing materials, invitation cards generally carry the same exact message: You are invited to an event at this time, date and place. Apart from add-ons such as BYOB, there's little else to be included on most invitation cards. What makes invitation cards even more cumbersome is the fact that the majority of them are for the same types of events: weddings, graduations, showers, confirmations, etc. And unless the event in question has a unique theme (such as a gangster-style wedding in Vegas), there's little variation and even less to work with when it comes to designing invitation cards. That doesn't mean that you're relegated to pumping out the same old tired, reworked invitation designs year after year. It just means you have to face the challenge of finding new ways to represent the same. To help you meet your challenge and hurdle the creativity (or lack thereof) obstacle, here are three creative design ideas for invitation cards.

1. Be synonymously symbolic

How do you represent love, loyalty and faithfulness for a wedding invitation card without featuring wisps of white or a bride and her groom? Think of synonyms for these words and matching symbols and include them on your wedding invitations. For example, a synonym of "love" is "enchantment," which is also synonymous with "magic." Make "magic" the theme for your wedding invitation and design invitation cards that feature the bride and groom rising out of a magician's hat with a magic wand sprinkling magic dust overhead. Do it elegantly, and you won't have to fear being corny.

2. Delve into details

Take a well-recognized symbol or other design element and focus on it for your invitation designs. Again using wedding invitation cards as an example, you could draw a large outline of a dove's wing and fill in the detail with, well, the details of the event itself. Or, depict a dove with wings spread and have the names of the bride's relatives on one wing and the names of the groom's relatives on the other - with the bride and groom themselves joining at the dove's heart. Delving into details is a great way to put a new twist on an old theme.

3. Toss in some humor

If your subjects have a great sense of humor, you might suggest injecting it into their invitation cards. Once again we'll use the wedding invitation example: Ever notice how some people get invited to the wedding and the reception, and others are invited only to the reception? Of course there are practical reasons for this; however, you can have a bit of fun and make the bride and groom's closest family and friends feel even more special by placing two check boxes on the invitations - one for the wedding and one for the reception - to denote which event(s) the invitee is invited to attend. Both will be checked, of course, but the impression that others are not so special can be endearing and humorous to all.