CATEGORY

Letterpress

RANK


PRODUCTION DETAILS

Quantity

50

Page Count

Number of Colors

2

Binding

Dimensions

7 × 5

Paper Stock

Crane Lettra, Pearl White, 600gr/m2

Special Techniques


DESIGN CREDITS

Amy Constable


TAGS

, ,


LINKS

saintgertrude.com.au

Invitation for/by Saint GertrudeInvitation for/by Saint GertrudeInvitation for/by Saint GertrudeInvitation for/by Saint GertrudeInvitation for/by Saint GertrudeInvitation for/by Saint Gertrude


CLIENT

Saint Gertrude is a self-taught design­er and let­ter­press print­er run­ning her own busi­ness. A pret­ty quirky kid who deliv­ers the unexpected.


BRIEF

To cre­ate an invi­ta­tion to our sur­prise wed­ding with­out giv­ing away the sur­prise. The invi­ta­tion need­ed to effec­tive­ly con­vey a decoy message—our daugh­ter’s birth­day party—but also cre­ate mean­ing for the guests who, in ret­ro­spect, would real­ize that this was always going to hap­pen: we were get­ting married.


APPROACH

The pur­pose of this piece was to give our loved ones the gift of the ulti­mate sur­prise and to cre­ate an elec­tric mem­o­ry for them. Wed­dings can be con­trived affairs, with all kinds of pre­con­ceived expec­ta­tions, but we want­ed to catch our guests so unaware that they had no choice but to be com­plete­ly present in the moment with us. The design also held a poignant sub­text that although the wed­ding was a sur­prise to them, for us get­ting mar­ried was actu­al­ly a fait accom­pli; it was always there, just under the sur­face, and lit­er­al­ly writ­ten in the stars.

PRODUCTION LESSONS

In my research for the piece, I discovered that decoder message print could work in letterpress, but whether it could deeply hide its secret message from our guests, who may stick it on the fridge and look at it every day, was a huge risk. Mostly that came down to the design, but creating the exact shade of red and lilac inks was a long and painstaking process. Similarly, the impression depth had to be very specific and was tailored to the time of day that our guests would be viewing the decoded message. The position of the sun could mean that the message was lost in impression shadow.

Table of Contents