Right from the beginning
I knew I wanted to make our invitations. Once I had
picked out the fonts I wanted to use and
gathered some more inspiration I set to work. I wanted to tie in (pun intended) our "Matthew and Alyssa are tying the knot" save the date video.
This is the very first version I created. I used two of my favourite fonts:
Strangelove and
Bookeyed Suzanne. Not too bad for a first attempt. I did have a couple of issues with this draft. The first being Strangelove is sadly too hard to read. I printed out a test run and it was too fine a print. I would have to let go of this font. My other issue was that the rope borders looked to much like an indication of a rodeo themed wedding. So what did I do?
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| first draft |
Added more rope...? Alright, that seems like a good idea. I also swapped out the illegible Strangelove font for all-caps Baskerville. It was a little too blah of a combination. And that rope...
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| second draft |
Still not happy with what was happening, I decided to give landscape orientation a try. As well as, you know, increase the size and amount of rodeo rope. I also tried carrying Bookeyed Suzanne through the entire invite, but I found it quite hard on the eyes—there were just too many swashes. I think this version was a low point in the design process. So it was time for more drastic changes.
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| third draft (& total fail) |
The fourth draft is where magic started happening. I swapped out the rodeo rope for fine, string-like drawings created in Illustrator. They had the right amount of whimsy and the right amount of "tying the knot." I also I loved the look of our silhouettes against the white on kraft paper, but that was going to be far to complicated to achieve. At this point, I decided to abandon kraft paper for the invites.
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| fourth draft (now we are getting somewhere) |
It was at about this point that I actually ordered the paper. This could have been an incredibly brilliant or incredibly stupid move. In my case, it was a brilliant move. I was now limited to
"superfine soft white" A6 note cards for the main invites and two
"superfine soft white" A2 note cards for supplemental information and the response card. With this in mind, I set to work. I also stopped using InDesign and switched to Illustrator.
The header of the fifth draft was heavily inspired by a set of invites I had found earlier in the inspiration process. I carried over the string frame from the fourth draft, and introduced
Bodoni at Home. It was my answer to the all-caps problem. Every other font I tried was too stuffy compared to the playful nature of Bookeyed Suzanne—the contrast to stark. Bodoni at Home is a handwritten type. It was perfect. However, this version was note quite perfect. It was actually kind of boring.
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| fifth draft |
Last Christmas, Matthew gave me a
Wacom Tablet. This was the perfect opportunity to put it to good use. I decided to replace Bookeyed Suzanne with my own handwriting. Done. I showed this version to Matthew and he was sold.
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| sixth draft (not quite the final, but close) |
So that is the very long, very detailed design journey of our invitations. It was a couple of months from start to finish. The actual making of the invites was an even longer more complicated process, which I will save for another time.
