Graduation lists are gadgets, gift cards, and frames for a photo everyone already has. None of those remember who sat through the boring parts.
Give the day a location
The stage is the part programs already describe. The gift is the side door of the gym, the parking lot, the kitchen after the gown comes off. A graduation comic starts from that place. If you were not at the ceremony, do not invent the stage. Write where you actually stood.
Name one person, then the next room
A teacher, a friend, a parent who drove. One witness is enough. Then write what they are walking toward: a shift, a bus, a room in a city they have not lived in. End there. A speech about the future in general is what the card already did, in a font.
When a story is the wrong gift
If they asked for a tool they will use on Monday, buy the tool. A chapter is for the person you are afraid you will summarize badly in five years. If that person is also the person you met in the same building, the meeting has its own pages at how we met.
Print it. An envelope is a bad shape for a hallway.