Ryan and Jeshurun developed their wedding materials with a series of elements that spoke to their history together, as well as what life had in store for each one of them at that moment. They met in a coffee shop, he manages a coffee shop, she was about to graduate from school and had access to a press…
Of course, as a graphic designer, there is some pressure to make your wedding invites a slice of design perfection. And on top of that, I was finishing my Master’s thesis in graphic design at RISD at the same time I was planning the wedding. Whew! Surprisingly, the invitations came together organically and without much stress. My husband Ryan manages a coffee shop, and we met in a coffee shop, so it seemed natural to incorporate that element as a design detail. Coffee plants are actually quite beautiful. I also recycled burlap coffee bags from his work by cutting them into small rectangles and attaching some home-made buttons of my own design to be used at the place settings.
I letterpressed my Save the Date’s at RISD and attached gorgeous hand-dyed silk ribbon (from Hanah Silk Ribbon) to create the bookmarks. To continue the book theme, I stacked books I had at home into the shape of a wedding cake and then photographed them and traced them loosely in Illustrator to create the invitations. My friend Elana at Spoon&Sailor Letterpress handled the printing of the invites since I wanted a perfect color-match and some additional letterpress expertise.
A rubber stamp and scalloped note cards from Paper Source made the RSVP’s a breeze. The menu was simply ink-jet printed on my Canon at home.
Shades of gray were the main color scheme, while shots of fuschia tied it all together.
As in most projects, there is a lesson to be kept (sometimes small and cheap, sometimes big and expensive):
I learned it is best to go to the letterpress experts, but I’m glad I fumbled my way through printing the save the dates myself. I like the salty look of how they came out. And cheap ribbon will not do, having the hand-dyed silk ribbon made all the difference.
Editor of FPO and co-founder of UnderConsideration LLC.
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UnderConsideration is a graphic design firm generating its own projects, initiatives, and content while taking on limited client work. Run by Bryony Gomez-Palacio and Armin Vit in Bloomington, IN. More…
blogs we publish
Brand New / Displaying opinions and focusing solely on corporate and brand identity work.
Art of the Menu / Cataloguing the underrated creativity of menus from around the world.
Quipsologies / Chronicling the most curious, creative, and notable projects, stories, and events of the graphic design industry on a daily basis.
products we sell
Flaunt: Designing effective, compelling and memorable portfolios of creative work.
Brand New Conference videos / Individual, downloadable videos of every presentation since 2010.
Prints / A variety of posters, the majority from our AIforGA series.
Other / Various one-off products.
events we organize
Brand New Conference / A two-day event on corporate and brand identity with some of today's most active and influential practitioners from around the world.
Brand Nieuwe Conference / Ditto but in Amsterdam.
Austin Initiative for Graphic Awesomeness / A speaker series in Austin, TX, featuring some of the graphic design industry's most awesome people.
also
Favorite Things we've Made / In our capacity as graphic designers.
Projects we've Concluded / Long- and short-lived efforts.
UCllc News / Updates on what's going at the corporate level of UnderConsideration.
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