How We Helped Lancôme Work Smarter (Not Harder) with Menu Place Cards
To elevate luxury activations and VIP dinners, you need to design every brand touchpoint through an influencer’s lens. But what does that actually look like?
When designing an environment, it’s safe to assume that most of it will be photographed and uploaded to social media. Ensuring that these moments are intentionally designed to live in the digital space will mean more people will see your brand, interact with it, and ultimately inquire about it.
Almost counterintuitively, we must find ways to design physical luxury that will be shared across a digital-first world.
The “Instagram Effect” is real, and digital real-estate is valuable now more than ever. With influencers carefully curating their feeds to ensure their shares align with their personal brand, a tailor-made-moment makes a guest feel truly seen.
Elevating the Table Landscape: Custom Place cards
When Lancôme’s agency reached out about creating a tailor-made set of place cards for their VIP dinner, every detail was already taken into account. From the heavyweight cardstock, to a specific monoline sans-serif script, they came to Handsome Ink to ensure that we could deliver on their vision with our technical skills and years of applying and studying multiple calligraphic styles.
At Handsome Ink, we work with you to realize your vision whether you already know exactly what you’d like or you’re still figuring out the creative direction. In this case, we worked closely with their team, sharing various script styles and mockups until we landed on the perfect fit for their aesthetic.
The Case Study: The Lancôme Challenge: Making Place Cards Work Smarter
To keep the tablescape minimalist yet high-impact for Lancôme, we combined the individual guest menu with custom calligraphy personalization. Instead of cluttering the plate with a separate name place card and a menu, we scripted each VIP guest's name directly onto the header of their bespoke menu. This ensured that the moment they sat down to photograph their meal, the Lancôme branding, the custom menu, and their personalized name were captured in a single, elegant frame (tying it all back to that Instagram Effect).
And when it comes to the production side of things, we letter on your custom stationery (like these) from our main calligraphy studio in Austin, Texas, and ship them for your high-stakes brand activation across the United States, ensuring your custom stationery is delivered on-time.
Oh, and if you are stressed about last-minute guest list additions—don't be. We know agency and event lists change up until the very last second. We are here to help ensure everyone knows exactly where they are sitting by quickly accommodating last-minute additions without breaking a sweat.
The Technical Detail: Matching the Medium to Brand Aesthetics
Knowing Lancôme’s vision in mind, it was then our turn to demonstrate our versatility and deep knowledge of luxury materials to find the medium that would be best suited for their stationery.
Every substrate acts differently, and there are better ink-to-paper combinations. Thankfully for our clients, our studio is chock-full of specialty pens and ink. Our years of study allow us to utilize an extensive internal reference library of recommendations to match your brand colors and textures perfectly—like the bespoke chartreuse green we recently custom-mixed for an upcoming bride’s wedding invitation suite.
The Logistics: Agency-Speed Turnaround
Oh, and if you’re wondering — this all happened in a span of days. Managing a high-end event most likely means there are high-stakes involved. And that usually comes with moving timelines and approvals (we get it, we’ve worked in the agency space, too). Event planners need to know that they’re working with the right calligraphy partner (hint hint 😉) to know that deadlines will be met with absolute precision and reliability.
Our studio operates like an upscale, seamless production partner. Which means, yes we can work under tight timelines and yes, our professional capabilities in communication (which we think is equally important) will make you feel at ease knowing that we are working with you as a partner to bring your vision to life in a seamless, friction-free way. And in case you’re wondering here are our capabilities:
Handsome Ink Studio Capabilities
Primary Service Area: Austin, Texas (Available for nationwide shipping & travel)
Turnaround Time: Rush delivery available (Fully operational under tight agency timelines)
Materials & Substrates Handled: Premium cotton cardstock, acrylic, leather, glass, wood, metallics, and beyond
Calligraphy Styles: Modern Script, Classic Copperplate, Engrosser’s Script, Italic, Minimalist Sans-Serif, Cursive Monoline Script and beyond. Bonus: if you’re looking for a specific style, we can work to bring your vision to life or act as a consultant for recommendations.
Event Types: Luxury Brand Activations, Influencer Dinners, VIP Corporate Galas, Upscale Weddings and more
Have place card questions? Let’s connect.
Are you looking to find the perfect place card for your upcoming event? Whether you’re a planner, bride, or a party aficionado, we’re here to navigate the journey with you.
And if you have an upcoming Q3 activation, reach out! We are fiesta people, and would love to bring your vision to life.
Visit our Contact Page to share your vision with us.