The brief
Powder Room Yorkville, a cocktail and dining room in Toronto's Yorkville district, needed a PR campaign piece for a major opening moment: its Raptors championship presentation. The audience was press and VIPs, and the bar was set by the room itself — deep red and gold, high-end, media-facing.
The real requirement was behavioural, not decorative: the invitation had to give recipients a reason to open it, photograph it and post it. A paper card in an envelope would not survive contact with that audience.
The idea: the invitation is the experience
The design tied the invitation to the menu itself. Powder Room's language is caviar service, so the invitation was delivered as a sealed presentation box containing the caviar: a rigid box with the invite card seated alongside a branded tin. The piece did not describe the experience — it delivered a first taste of it.
That decision carried the room's identity from the doorstep into the guest's hands, which is the entire job of PR packaging: it exists to travel, to be photographed and to earn the post.
Engineering the box
The construction was specified around the contents. A rigid box with foam seating held the tin and the printed invitation card in position, deep red stock carried the brand colour, and gold foil with embossed detailing ran across the lid. The foam seating was the unglamorous engineering decision that mattered most: a fragile presentation piece had to survive transit to every recipient on the list.
As with every ViCES Studio program, the construction and finish were locked into a written specification before sourcing, and a physical sample was approved before the run — so the red, the foil and the paper weight were confirmed by hand before anything shipped.
Kitting and dispatch
The final stage was hand work: the boxes were kitted and dispatched by hand to the press and VIP list ahead of opening. For a run this size, hand assembly is not a compromise — it is the quality control. Every recipient's piece was checked and packed by the team that designed it.
What it delivered
The program produced an invite built for the feed, a zero-damage transit spec for a fragile presentation piece, and a packaging moment that carried the venue's identity into the opening campaign. The boxes became part of the story the press told, not a formality they mentioned.
It is the clearest example of the studio's working thesis: for launches, openings and campaigns, packaging is not shipping — it is the first physical scene of the experience.
Questions we get asked
- Why make an invitation a physical box instead of a digital invite?
- For press and VIP audiences, a physical piece gives recipients a reason to open, photograph and post. The Powder Room Yorkville box was built so the invitation itself would earn coverage — the packaging became part of the story the press told.
- What made the box survive shipping?
- A rigid construction with foam seating that held the caviar tin and invitation card in position through transit. The zero-damage spec was designed into the box, not added after, and a physical sample was approved before the run.
- Can this approach be used for other launches?
- Yes. Rigid PR and gifting boxes are routine programs — openings, product launches, festivals and seeding campaigns. High-touch runs can be small, and luxury gifting programs can run with no minimum. Submit a brief with the moment, audience and timeline to begin.
Planning a packaging program?
Send the product, target quantity, timeline and budget range. ViCES Studio returns a recommended creative and production path, preliminary costing and a sampling plan. Most programs run four to eight weeks from approved design.