I turned twenty-something once. Actually, I have turned twenty-something several times now. On some of these occasions, I have had parties (or get-togethers, as I like to call them). But once, I turned twenty-something and I had a get together and I decided to make kind of a big deal of it.

To build awareness of my upcoming event, I developed a whole campaign of advertisements that I ran on my web site (then eurodan.net), beginning about three weeks before the soirée, and sent “email-blasts” to all invitees with every new publishing. Seen below is the bulk of the series. (You can click on the images to see how they appeared on my site originally.)

I started with a very oblique teaser:

Please Get Down party announcement / teaser. (original photograph by Matt Johnson / 1995); I lifted the term “Please get down” from the most exasperated, impassioned plea in the jam-out-session of “Jolene,” probably the best song ever written/performed by Cake. | web site; 500 x 300px.+ / 2001

Once I had the date figured out, I released the information in a slightly less oblique alphanumeric mien:

Party announcement. The letters of “PARTY” are on the date of the get-together. | web site; 345 x 420px.+ / 2001

Then, I quit messing around and made all of the information perfectly clear for everyone (as long they weren’t colorblind):

This announcement was numerically- and color-coded, and it even rhymed! (shown above at approximately 50%) | web site; 780 x 440px.+ / 2001

As the week approached, I made the final push with a series of reminders…

Just in case you weren’t sure what was going to happen at the get-together, this was certainly a possibility:

Please Get Down party announcement. (original photo by Jen Paur / 2000) | web site; 600 x 300px.+ / 2001

Or possibly even this:

Please Get Down party announcement. (original photograph by Johann Gómez, I think / 2001) | web site; 500 x 600px.+ / 2001

A few people at my office had get-togethers pretty regularly, and a de-facto convention of putting up fliers around the studio had been established, so I made one or two print-only ads for this purpose, like so:

Please Get Down flier; color laser print; 11 x 8.5in. / 2001

Annoyingly enough, after all of my effort, it turned out that one of those regular party-throwers actually had his own get-together planned for the same night, and he had put up his own fliers just before my office print campaign was to begin. My response was to just put my flyers directly above his in every location. Even so, the coincidence still cut my attendance significantly. But what was I going to do if everyone from the office didn’t want to get down with me? It’s not like I’m going to beg.