After hearing Stefan Sagmeister’s thought provoking presentation “Can Design Touch a Heart” at the AIGA National Conference in 1999, Paul Rustand was inspired to bring the legendary designer to Chattanooga, Tennessee to give the same presentation.
After settling on a date in November 2000, Paul set out to create an invitation design as interesting as the talk. In collaboration with Sagmeister, Paul landed on a final design based on the concept of heart medication. The invitation was a two phase design, with the first phase being a prescription pad mailed out with the presentation info written out in that format.
The second phase was mailed out two weeks later. It was a small box that contained a prescription pill bottle. In the bottle was one capsule. In the capsule was a 14 inch long invitation with information printed on it. Since regular paper could only be folded in half so many times, the invitation was printed on tracing paper, which folded easier and allowed for a longer size. The information was letterpress printed on the tracing paper.
After the presentation, Paul collected compliments, kind words and thank yous from the attendees that shared them and packaged them up, each inside a capsule. He collected them all into a large pill bottle and sent them on to Stefan with instructions that any time he felt down, he should open one up.
