Witnessing the “Sea of Red” at a Nebraska home football game is an uncanny experience. Just walking the streets of downtown Lincoln on game-day is a sight to see. The dedication to team color isn’t the only thing that makes the experience. The energy and excitement that radiates from Nebraska fans is one of the reasons Memorial Stadium is ranked as one of the toughest places for visiting teams to play college football.

For the 2009 Husker football season, the President’s Office of the University of Nebraska asked us to create an invitation for each of the scheduled home games. For those who received the invites, we wanted to recreate the game-day experience as accurately as possible. Making everything red is of course the best way to do this. Since gallon jugs of red paint are fairly expensive to ship, we designed a custom set of “decoder” glasses.

Inside of the pigskin-textured invitations, invitees found the event details along with a secret message that could be seen using the included decoder glasses. The theme was carried over to the tailgate parties where those in attendance were able to use the glasses to test their Husker trivia knowledge.