As a designer, any work that you undertake for yourself is always going to be heavily scrutinised. This is an expression of what you like, not what your client is directing you towards or what you need to do to make a crust. This is truly your own style, and it had best be incredible.
So when it came to creating my own wedding invitations, I was more than a little nervous.
The other caveat of being a designer, particularly one in business for themselves, is that your stuff always comes last. Your blog posts, your social media, your website – last. The most important thing is always the service of the client. And so it becomes a bit of a game – how do I dedicate time to this particular design project that will in fact cost me money, while turning away work that could be done in that timeslot instead?
I was quite cognoscente of not wanting to rush the creation of my wedding invitations. I wanted them to be done right, to be beautiful and to utilise some of the tricks of the trade I have learnt over the years. I didn’t want to get to a point on the timeline where I absolutely HAD TO get these invitations done and so just throw something together, it will be fine. No, if I was going to create wedding invitations off which all my future work would be measured, I wanted them to be right.
For our minds, we were having a very simple wedding overall and I think the invitations reflect that. Simple type layout, a good balance of information and white space and our little personal brand, which we established for our engagement invitations, was included.
In the instance that you create simple ANYTHING, every detail needs to be perfect. The perfect vellum and beautiful artboard stock from Paper Fusion in Perth; down to the detail of kerning and leading. Each detail needs to create the design, and this is particularly important when it comes to truly simple, minimalist design.
We allowed this same approach to flow through our wedding signage, matching the same style and approach on acetate. While I designed the signs, they truly came to life thanks to my dear friend Kate from Two Wild Hands. Each was painstakingly traced onto the acetate and these beautiful copper stands created a sense of industrial and geometric boldness in our stunning garden setting.
These pieces are truly some of my favourite things I have ever designed; because they are the style I like, because I got to direct the design and because they were an incredibly textural experience. I am just so pleased with how they came together.
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