Midnight House
The Tenth
Vendor guide · the Rivoli, Philadelphia
If you are reading only one part
- Everyone
- No metal. Anywhere. No gold, brass, copper, foil or metallic ink — this
is the one absolute in the whole job, and it is the argument the design makes. A casino night that
glints is every other casino night in this city.
- Venue / production
- The Rivoli is a 1927 cinema that stopped showing films in 1981 — a
plaster proscenium, a terrazzo lobby, one enormous room. Work with the black and the plaster.
No Vegas, no neon, no showgirl deco, and no red.
- Photographer
- The stationery list is the shot list. Worth a frame: the blind deboss
on the shirt shape — it is felt before it is seen and only reads in raking light — and the opaque
white standing proud of the black stock. No photographs of people appear on any piece, by
instruction.
- Caterer / floor
- Nobody sits down. Supper is standing, passed and carved, from nine
until midnight. The menu card is headed “Supper, standing, from nine” because that is what
the family says, and it has no courses in the seated sense.
Two things that are non-negotiable
1 · The line travels with the invitation.
“Every chip endows the Aldo
Sorrentino Scholarship.”
The chips-are-donations mechanic is the single thing guests get wrong every year — and they get it
wrong at the cage at nine o'clock, when it is too late to explain. It is on the invitation for
that reason and it does not get moved to a footnote.
2 · Aldo is in this as a maker, not as a memorial.
No “in loving memory”, no dates, no portrait, no black band, nothing that reads as remembrance.
He rented dinner jackets on Girard Avenue for forty-one years, four blocks from this room. The
shirt shape is his trade standing in it — that is the whole tribute, and adding anything to it
undoes it.
The event
- Date
- Saturday, 14 November 2026
- From
- Eight o'clock · supper standing from nine until midnight
- Venue
- The Rivoli
Philadelphia
- The room
- A 1927 cinema that stopped showing films in 1981 and now hires out as one
enormous room. The screen is gone; what is left is a plaster proscenium and a terrazzo lobby.
- Guests
- 220
- Dress
- Black tie
- Replies by
- 24 October 2026
The visual identity at a glance
Typefaces: Bodoni Moda for the name of the night, Jost for the second
register.
Black stock and opaque white ink, and the absence is the point. The cold grey is a second register
for the quieter line, never a third colour. Two type registers and no body copy — if a piece
needs a paragraph, the piece is wrong.
Match to the printed piece, not to these squares. These are screen values, and this suite in
particular cannot be judged on a screen: it is opaque white screen ink standing proud of black
stock, so it has physical relief, and the deboss has none at all until light hits it sideways.
Ask for a real card before matching linen, signage or lighting gels.
Stationery arriving
| Piece | Trim | Quantity |
|---|
| Invitation | 5 × 7″, black duplex 600 gsm | one per household |
| Envelope + liner | to envelope size | as invitations |
| Save the date | 5 × 7″ | as invitations |
| Reply card | 4.25 × 5.5″ | one per household |
| Event badge / VIP pass | CR80, 3.375 × 2.125″ | 242 |
| Menu card | 4 × 9″ | 242 |
| Place cards | 2 × 3.5″ folded | see the note below |
| Table numbers | 5 × 7″ | one per table |
| Bar & drink menu | 11.7 × 8.3″ | one per station |
| Welcome signage | 24 × 36″ | 1 |
⚠ Place cards — confirm before
printing. The guest-count rule would give 242, but this evening has no seated supper: people
stand from nine until midnight. Whether the place cards mark reserved spots, gaming tables or something
else changes the number completely, so ask the studio rather than printing 242 of them. Everything else
is 220 guests plus a proofing margin; “one per household” is the envelope count.
Day-of notes
- The cut
- The word the family keeps using is CUT. Everything about the night is cut
— the clothes are cut, the cards are cut, the deck is cut — so the shapes are cut too: hard edges,
cropped by the trim on three sides, no outline and no shading. Nothing is drawn.
- The shirt
- The front of a dress shirt, blind-debossed into the black on that piece alone.
It is the only place the deboss appears. Do not print it, do not outline it, and do not add it to
pieces that do not have it.
- The chips
- Chips are donations. The line goes on the invitation and it should be repeated
at the cage in the same words — the failure mode is a guest discovering it at nine o'clock.
- Supper
- Standing, passed and carved, nine until midnight. The menu is read at a table with
a drink in one hand: one side, big type, no courses.
- It is a party first
- People come to gamble and drink and stand about in evening dress, and
the money happens sideways. Sharp, confident, a bit funny — not worthy, and nothing that
looks like a charity appeal.
- Material
- Opaque white screen ink on heavy black duplex at 600 gsm, blind deboss on the
shirt only, envelopes printed white on black. No calligraphy.
Please do not
- No gold, no brass, no copper, no foil, no metallic ink of any kind. This is the one absolute.
- No playing-card suits, no dice, no roulette wheels, no chip stacks, no cards fanned out.
- No “Vegas”, no neon, no showgirl deco, no red.
- No photographs of people.
- No script or handwriting fonts.
- No ribbons, no wax seals, no crests.
- Nothing that looks like a charity appeal.
The family's own list. Every casino night in this city
looks like the second line, and Aldo hated all of it.
Questions about anything on this sheet
Ask the studio directly rather than working around a detail —
hello@evorrah.com. Artwork, vector files and colour references
for anything listed here can be sent to a supplier on request.