Fundraising Event Invitation
Case Study
Event Suite Design Strategy Production Coordination
What is Dinner at the Diamond?
Dinner at the Diamond is an annual fundraising event hosted by the Angelina College Foundation. The event brings together community members, sponsors, and supporters for an evening featuring live music, games, auctions, food, and drinks. Proceeds from the event directly support Angelina College students by helping fund educational opportunities and student-focused initiatives.
The Challenges
As a flagship fundraising event, Dinner at the Diamond required printed materials that felt elevated, cohesive, and memorable while also communicating a large amount of information clearly. The invitation needed to reflect the prestige of the event, accommodate multiple inserts, and function as a self-contained mailer without a traditional envelope. In addition, sponsor recognition, event details, and RSVP logistics all had to be incorporated without overwhelming the recipient.
This project required anticipating how sponsors and guests would physically engage with a complex, multi-piece invitation. The challenge was to design an experience that felt intentional and engaging at every stage of interaction, while ensuring the structure remained intuitive, functional, and production-ready.
The Solution
The solution centered on designing the invitation as an experience rather than a single printed piece. Layout decisions were guided by how sponsors and guests would physically interact with the invitation, treating the act of opening and exploring each component as part of the event itself.
Throughout the design process, mini printed samples were produced to test scale, sequencing, folds, and overall usability. This hands-on approach allowed refinements to be made in real time, ensuring that each element revealed information intentionally while remaining intuitive and production-ready. The final self-enclosed invitation system balanced form and function, using clear hierarchy and thoughtful pacing to create an elegant, engaging experience.
Services Provided
For the 2024 Dinner at the Diamond invitation, Christina led the design and coordination of a custom, self-enclosed print piece within an established invitation format. Her work focused on developing the annual visual theme, refining typographic choices, updating content, and ensuring a clear information hierarchy while preserving the structure that returning sponsors and guests were familiar with.
Services for the invitation included:
Annual theme development, including color palette and typographic direction
Refinement of an existing multi-piece invitation layout
Content updates and information hierarchy adjustments
Preparation of print-ready files and coordination with production
Beyond the invitation, Christina served as the lead designer for Dinner at the Diamond from 2023 through 2025, producing a wide range of supporting materials. These included save-the-dates, sponsorship packets, event signage (sponsor signs, auction item signs, bar and table signage, and game instructions), as well as auction and payment tracking paperwork. As part of this work, she created and maintained an Excel-based project tracking document. Each year, the document began as a record of prior-year deliverables and evolved into a shared tool for managing updates, additions, timelines, and information requests across multiple projects. By the 2025 event, this system had become an integral workflow resource for the Foundation’s team.
The Execution
The execution required close attention to print specifications, die lines, folds, and production constraints to ensure the invitation functioned as intended. Each component was prepared with precise dimensions so that all inserts fit securely within the pocket and the mailer closed cleanly.
Typography, spacing, and visual hierarchy were carefully considered to accommodate varying levels of information density across the invitation system, ensuring clarity while maintaining a polished presentation suitable for a large-scale fundraising event. In addition, the Excel-based project tracking document created by Christina served as a key tool during execution, helping the team monitor progress, track updates, request necessary information, and manage multiple deliverables simultaneously.
The Results
According to the Angelina College Foundation, the fifth annual Dinner at the Diamond event in 2024 was a tremendous success, welcoming more than 750 guests and raising over $100,000 in support of Angelina College students. The funds directly supported the Foundation’s mission to provide quality education and meaningful opportunities, reinforcing the importance of clear, thoughtful design in advancing organizational goals.
The project demonstrates Christina’s ability to lead complex print design projects from concept through execution, thoughtfully balance visual aesthetics with functional requirements, and implement workflow tools that enhance team efficiency and coordination.