The Pre-DD Years: Air Claire

Looking back through my portfolio, there are quite a number of projects related to parenting, children or education. Maybe it was early Designer Daddy training, or just coincidence. Either way, I’m proud of these babies and want to show them off again…

The first project that came to mind is one of my all-time favorites — a birth announcement I designed while at my first job in DC. I was working at Supon Design Group, where I had the rare combination of great co-workers and great clients. Needless to say there was always a healthy dose of (friendly) competition among the designers assigned to a job. So I was particularly honored (both professionally and personally) to be the lead designer given the task of creating the birth announcement for one of our clients.

Our client was adopting a little girl from China, and wanted something clever and sweet to announce this unique family being formed. It was printed on 3 sheets of semi-transparent vellum (to give the appearance of rice paper), and featured an illustration of an origami stork delivering a tiny Chinese carry out box. It says “AIR” on the top panel, and “CLAIRE” on the 2nd panel underneath, with the “AIR” in each word overlapping. The tag line reads like the cutest airline ever: “Babies fly free.” On the bottom panel are the specifics of Claire’s birth along with the Chinese character for happiness. It was all tied together with strands of red and gold ribbon and mailed in a custom envelope.

A funny bit of trivia: Claire was from China, origami is Japanese, and the woman who illustrated the stork is Korean. Quite the Pan-Asian creation!