The futuristic 1980’s video game aesthetic is full of neon and geometric patterns, which I was excited to pull into the project.
For this project, the client wanted me to create a birthday invitation for her husband and his best friend. It was for their 40th birthday and both men loved video games. I was beyond excited to create this because I love retro video games. The event was hosted at an awesome local business called Reclaim Arcade. The location features a large selection of retro arcade cabinets and brand-new pinball tables. I recommend checking them out.
After meeting with the client, I thought about how I was going to design it. The client wanted a video game themed, but with a grown-up feel. She didn’t want it to look like a children’s birthday invitation. I was inspired by the current popularity of Stranger Things and futuristic retro games like Tron. They feature that neon geometric pattern over a dark background. I also wanted to use a phrase like “Excellent Adventure” for the pair of best friends growing up in the 1980’s. Who doesn’t love a Bill and Ted reference?
Project Outcome
The Best of Both Worlds
For this invitation, I found the two images shown above on Shutterstock. I loved both equally and built mockups with both on InDesign. After showing the client, who also couldn’t decide between the two, I tried merging both images together. I removed the background sky on the mountain range image and layered it on top of the other image. After some careful editing, I arrived at the final invitation design and the client was extremely pleased!
Amazing Results
For the typography, I chose two very 1980’s themed fonts. The larger font used for the title was created in Adobe Illustrator. I made “40th” stand out with the neon style font. It helped lend to the 1980’s pop culture vibe. For the main body of text, I used a more subtle neon themed font. I placed a gradient of blues, pinks, and purples on it to tie in the colors from the images above. I then added the neon vector box around the most important details for the event to draw attention to it.
