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Back in November Alyssa and Josh sent out their wedding save the date, which we covered in FPO. While they were still unsure of the full wedding concept, music seemed to be an important and viable direction.

When we came up with the idea of the “gig poster”-as-save-the-date, we’d tossed around the idea of making the entire invitation set feel like music ephemera; LPs, fan club documents, badges, etc. The idea of a gatefold LP album cover felt like a natural choice for the invitation. But the size would be an issue, as we weren’t planning on mailing 12 × 12-inch envelopes. So we went with a half scale; 6-inch-square, folded, instead of 12-inch.

The design of the front cover came first. We were inspired by albums designed mostly in the 1950s through early ’60s, especially “floating head” style covers. I pored obsessively over the typography for weeks, but in a single marathon post-midnight photography session, we finally had the perfect cover portrait. Most of my experience is in panoramic photography and object photography, so I was initially intimidated by the notion of trying to pull off convincing mid-century portrait photography. We pretty much made it up as we went along. Working with a black sweatshirt as our backdrop, we used a small clamp light as our key light on the left, and, next to her face, Alyssa held up an adorable battery operated blue LED nightlight that we got at IKEA. I would set the timed shutter release, and then run back behind Alyssa, and crouch to get my head in the right position. It took a few tries to get the positioning right, but with the proper underexposure, we were able to achieve the half-lit Robert Freeman cover portrait look with plenty of negative space for copy. But by themselves, our floating heads weren’t enough to fill the cover with color. So I took another shot of our lighting setup—sans Alyssa and me—deliberately out of focus. That gave us a great colorful bokeh effect that we would overlay on top of our portraits to produce the final effect. To simulate the “big foreground portrait, small background portrait” effect, we photographed a vintage caketopper in similar lighting conditions, and overlayed that image into some of the negative space in Photoshop. Voilà.

I believe that any couple who can have this much fun with their wedding invitation (and wedding planning) is in it for the long haul. If you want to read more about the design and process, as well as the other pieces please do so in theirblog.

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Zoyes Creative Holiday Card

Alyssa and Josh’s Album Cover Wedding Invitation

Production Method

Design

Alyssa Zukas and Josh Korwin

Printing

Alyssa Zukas and Josh Korwin at Classic Litho Printers