the designer’s process (or the making of a wedding invitation)

This Spring, I had the pleasure to work on my good friend’s wedding invitation. I wanted to give her a handful of options that were all different enough from each other, but related enough to their style and design sense to each stand on their own.

From the Client:

I was given pretty free terrain, but my friend requested that the process be as environmentally friendly as possible and to keep costs down, with a materials and printing budget of $350.

Other requests/suggestions included: the colors green and red (though not Christmasy), and simple in style. They also had a piece of art that he gave her which they wanted to see included in one variation.

My turn:

I’ve previously used greenerprinter.com for environmentally-friendly digital printing, but I wanted to see what else was out there. I knew letterpress would be over budget, but I made some inquires anyway, and checked out some other eco-friendly options. In my searches, I found these pocketfolds, which we decided to use to contain the invitation and reply card.

I decided to do a mock-up of five different types of invitations. Generally, my belief is that you want to give the client a good representation of what is possible without spending too much time on multiple pieces for the initial stage, and without overwhelming them with options. A general rule is that you want to show them the best of your work and nothing more or less. Since I knew the clients well, I came up with five overall themes that I felt fit their lives: fancy (more traditional), modern, natural, urban and one last piece using the artwork that they gave me.

Here are the original mock-ups:

first round of mock-ups

Step Two:

Once my friends had a chance to look them over, they decided on the ‘fancy’ version with some small tweaks. We changed the brackets around their name and the placement of a few words. Mostly, they were really happy with it. It incorporated a variation of the color scheme that they originally were interested in (green and red), natural and simple ideals. And, lastly, it would be printed on recycled paper with soy ink from greenerprinter.

Final Step:

Normally, a process like this might take a few more rounds of revisions, but this went very smoothly. When we decided on the look and feel of the invitation, I was able to come up with a simple reply-postcard, printed on the same material.

Once all were finished, I uploaded the digital files to greenerprinter and they were shipped out to my friends on the east coast. It really shows you how easy it is to work with folks all over the country as long as you are both connected to a computer.

Here is reply card:

At lastly, but certainly not least, here is what came in the mail to me, the whole invitation.

The whole package.

Advertisement