Central Library’s “Texts In The City” Gala Invitation

We’ve been very pleased at the enthusiastic reception for this year’s Gala invitation for the St. Louis Library Foundation. For the last two years we’ve created iconic invitations to this signature fundraising event (here and here), and we always try to top ourselves.

This year’s invitation was especially challenging, since the theme we were working with seemed to lead down the route of a simple “Sex In The City” parody. Instead, our designer Mary Rosamond came up with a wonderfully clever way to take real literary texts and weave them together into an evocative passage about a gala party under the stars in a faraway sparkling city. The passage is paired with illustrations handcrafted from bits of found book and advertising ephemera. Mary designed a custom accordion fold, “so that it would look like you were turning through the pages of the books quoted in the story, make you feel like you were entering into the story, with characters coming to life on the pages.”

It was a good solution – a format that fit the content well, was out of the ordinary, yet very cost effective to produce. The result is hauntingly beautiful, childlike, and quietly elegant all at the same time.

The “Texts and the City” Gala, to benefit the St. Louis Public Library Foundation and the renovation of our magnificent Central Library, takes place November 19 at St. Louis City Hall. Tickets are available here.