The Oscar ceremony, perhaps the grande dame of events anywhere, should hardly be expected to contain the winners of its coveted awards in ordinary envelopes from, say, Staples. For 70 years the Oscars have used sealed envelopes as part of the presentation, but this is the first year those envelopes will be specially designed. This year, the award show will get stationery befitting its reputation for opulence courtesy of Marc Friedland, founder and creative director of Marc Friedland Couture Communications, who is designing new envelopes and announcement cards bearing the names of the winners of the 83rd Academy Awards, telecast producers Bruce Cohen and Don Mischer announced Wednesday.
Friedland—whose namesake brand together with his experiential branding agency Creative Intelligence Inc. comprise the two aspects of his 25-year-old business—custom designed the envelope that will be hand-crafted from a high-gloss, iridescent metallic gold paper stock with a red-lacquered lining bearing the Oscar statuette hand-stamped in satin gold leaf. The outside of the envelope and flap is an art deco-inspired satin gold foil frame with an ecru inset panel bearing the name of the award category in charcoal ink.
Inside will be a heavy-weight ecru card with gold-foil accents and a gold-leaf embossed Oscar statuette along with the phrase, “And the Oscar goes to…." The winner's name will be printed in charcoal ink and mounted onto a matching, red lacquer hand-wrapped frame. The back of the card will be printed with the award category.
Friedland will also produce an announcement card for each of the year’s nominees. After final tabulation of the ballots, Brad Oltmanns and Rick Rosas, the PricewaterhouseCoopers partners, will insert the appropriate announcement cards and fasten the envelope with a red double-faced satin ribbon and a red lacquered and gold embossed seal bearing the PwC logo. All of the remaining nominee cards will then be destroyed.
“I wanted to create an envelope that matched the iconic stature of the Oscars as an event known and watched around the world,” said Friedland in a release. “So few people actually ever hold these envelopes yet nearly a billion view it. And like the Oscar statuette, the envelope is deserving of its own iconic status. To create it felt like a beautiful gesture—an enduring way to commemorate and capture the importance of the moment at this illustrious event."
