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2024

Elevating Women's Day 2024

Client

27four Investment Managers

Deliverable

Event Stationery

Scope

Event design + Print production

Welcome drinks with diecut glass tags at the Women’s Day brunch.

01 — The Brief

A Room Full of Guests

As a financial services group, 27four Investment Managers places diversity, equity, and inclusion at the core of their mission. Women's Day is significant in their community, a moment to celebrate the people their work is actually for. For their 2024 Women's Day brunch, the brief was simple: a menu and name tag for each of the 125 guests. The stationery ran alongside their "Who we do it for" campaign, so it had to feel personal and considered, not just functional.

My task: design and execute a cohesive paper stationery system that felt celebratory for a corporate event, produced in-office and using a Cricut Maker 3 paper-cutting machine.

02 — The Strategy

Every Piece Was Designed Around Them

27four's brand identity is bold and high-contrast — flat design, a bold red, and a clean sans-serif as the primary typeface. The venue was the opposite: an intimate, elegant heritage space with lush garden grounds.

Every Piece Designed Around Them

27four's brand identity is bold and high-contrast — flat design, a bold red, and a clean sans-serif as the primary typeface. The venue was the opposite: an intimate, elegant heritage space with lush garden grounds.

The Brand

27four brand identity manual with a bold layout.
27four brand identity manual with a bold layout.

High-contrast, structured brand identity.

The Venue

Historic white Cape Dutch venue framed by palms and lush gardens.

Elegant, luxurious heritage venue.

The strategy was to soften the brand's tone to make guests feel seen. While 27four's visual language provides structure, a purely corporate approach risked feeling disconnected from the celebratory spirit of Women's Day. Throughout, the tone was intentionally centred on the individual guest. The brand's foundation remained, but a more distinctive typographic and visual system helped bridge the gap between 27four's identity and the event's more personal, festive spirit.

Working through the brief also uncovered a gap in the arrival experience: checking when guests would first receive anything with the brand on it showed that nothing reached them until they sat down, so a third piece was added to cover that moment. Menus and name tags only reach guests once they sit down. To cover that gap, a third piece was proposed: a circular tag for every champagne glass. It attached to something guests were already holding, rather than adding a separate item to manage and became part of the decor.

03 — Process

The Trees Outside Had the Answer

To infuse the stationery with a sense of warmth and approachability that the corporate brand lacked, it was clear that an additional element was needed. An illustration system would soften 27four's corporate identity and tie the printed pieces to the room, but it needed a subject. The decor brief introduced a Mediterranean theme with greens, blues and citrus table decor, but with a constraint: no flower variety could be guaranteed.

With the citrus decor elements already specified, the venue's own lemon trees became the central motif. I selected and art directed a licensed citrus illustration system by Ukrainian artist Oksana Berko, choosing her work because the loose watercolour style matched the hand-painted invitation and the citrus subject tied directly to the venue's lemon trees. All layouts, text, and layouts were done by me, created to unify the visual story across each piece. The invitation itself featured a hand-painted rendering of the venue by artist Talia Botha. It set the visual tone the stationery had to carry.

The Answer was Growing Outside

The stationery needed something to carry the warmth the brand couldn't. An illustration system would soften 27four's corporate identity and tie the printed pieces to the room, but it needed a subject. The decor brief introduced a Mediterranean theme with greens, blues and citrus table decor, but with a constraint: no flower variety could be guaranteed.

With the citrus decor elements already specified, the venue's own lemon trees became a clear anchor. A licensed citrus illustration system by Ukrainian artist Oksana Berko became the thread. The watercolour illustrations tie back to the digital invitation already in guests' hands, which featured a hand-painted rendering of the venue by artist Talia Botha.

Invitation featuring the Women’s Day venue watercolour rendering.
Invitation featuring the Women’s Day venue watercolour rendering.

The invitation set the visual direction and brief for the stationery. (Not my design.)

Citrus tree outside the venue.
Citrus tree outside the venue.

Lemon trees outside the venue.

04 — Design Decisions

Three Objects, One Story

With the concept in place, the system had to work across three formats at very different scales: an A5 menu card, a name tag, and a circular glass tag.

Women’s Day place setting with menu, name tag and glass tag.
Women’s Day place setting with menu, name tag and glass tag.

All three pieces at a single place setting — the menu card centred on the plate, name tag with citrus sprig to the left, circular glass tag on the flute stem.

Typography: The Seasons, an elegant serif typeface carried over from the digital invitation, was used for guest names and headings. It softened the brand's corporate edge from the moment guests picked up the first piece. Sora handled body text, keeping the brand present without dominating.

Colour: The palette came directly from the decor brief — pale blue, lemon yellow and Mediterranean greens — mapped against 27four's brand palette to keep the stationery consistent with the room and the brand.

Die-cutting: The citrus illustrations were die-cut to extend beyond the card edges, reinforcing 27four's high-contrast identity and giving each piece a dynamic, bespoke quality.

Sequence: Each of the three pieces was intentionally sequenced to shape the guest experience at every stage: the glass tag welcomed guests and introduced the campaign message upon arrival, the menu card set the tone at the table, and the name tag personalised each place setting, ensuring a thoughtful progression from entry to seating.

05 — Production & Outcome

To Elevate a Morning into a Celebration

All 375 pieces were produced entirely in-office over three weeks on a Cricut Maker 3. Adobe InDesign's Data Merge and a CSV file automated the 125 unique name tag layouts. The labour-intensive part was peeling 375 cut pieces off the Cricut mats by hand.

The event brought together a diverse group of women from across the firm's network. The stationery gave guests a consistent thread to follow throughout the morning, making the experience feel intentional. A simple menu and name tag developed into a unified system that gave the morning a consistent, personal feel; some guests connected with enough to take their lanyards home.

The stationery landed well, with the firm and guests both responding positively. The firm’s CEO commented that it was one of the best events they'd ever done, while many guests shared compliments on the unique lemon motif and diecut details. Several attendees mentioned that the personalised name tags and thoughtful touches made them feel genuinely welcome and valued.

Guest holding the citrus-illustrated, diecut brunch menu at the event.
Guest holding the citrus-illustrated, diecut brunch menu at the event.

Name tag, menu card, glass tag — the full system in place.

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or get in touch.

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See my work,
or get in touch.

View case studies →

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