We've been creating A LOT of custom invitation designs for our clients. We start with their ideas and inspirations, and build on that. Any successful custom design starts with a spark of an idea, and I love getting to know our clients, their loves, and their style, to help them tell their love story. One of my favorite projects of the year (and last year too) was working with Katie and Brandon on their save the date and wedding invitations. I'm sure I'll devote more blog posts to this great couple, but for now, wanted to share a bit of the process getting to the invitation. Katie loves paper, and we happened to be the first stop on their wedding planning to do list, after they picked their venue, which is a great place to start figuring out the direction of your wedding design overall. I felt Katie and I had an immediate connection. She was clear in explaining her style, preferences, and knew what she wanted, and trusted me to help her create that. As an aside, trust + communication makes for a pretty great client! We started in spring of 2013, creating a vintage style postcard from a photo Katie had found of Cafe Brauer, and photos that I had them shoot in profile. They both thought their silhouettes looked pretty accurate, especially Brandon! You'll have to tell me if you agree- see what they look like over on our site-they both agreed to model and helped me shoot our custom design process with Julia Franzosa. See, great clients!
Cafe Brauer's architecture was the main inspiration for the letterpress invitation suite. I wasn't getting much inspiration from photos I was finding on the web, so one sort of spring-like day, I drove over to the site and peeked around, taking photos.
We provided a whole page of patterns based off of our inspirations from this outing, and in the end, Katie chose the ones that most reminded her of the iconic prairie style building.
These were printed 2 color letterpress with Rohner Letterpress on 179lb ultra thick cranes cotton paper, and Nick and I had a tough time getting the taupe color to not look chocolate. I learned a ton about transparent inks and the mix and how paper color affects the outcome that day, as we spend a good hour, just getting the taupe right.
The details really are the key to adding individuality to any paper suite. The inner envelopes were lined in light grey paper, and calligraphed by Stacey Shapiro. We letterpressed their silhouettes under the response envelope flap, and painted the edges green, by far one of my favorite details.
Now,we're starting on the Day-Of Details, and are incorporating these designs and more into their welcome bags, menus, programs, and escort cards. Stay tuned for more!
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