Design Work Life: Cataloging Inspiration Daily

Today I’m pleased to share the invi­ta­tions Loren Klein designed for his wed­ding last sum­mer. Below is a bit of back­ground from Loren about the design, and if you’re inter­ested you can see pic­tures from their wed­ding — looks like it was an awe­some day—right here.

My wife and I met in high school and had been together for over ten years when I began think­ing about design­ing our own wed­ding invi­ta­tions. Our wed­ding was to be held on a beau­ti­ful grassy hill on a farm in Charlottesville, VA, with the recep­tion tak­ing place in an old barn. After a lot of thought, I envi­sioned a time­line of our lives that rep­re­sented how long we had been together, which led to more ideas involv­ing info­graph­ics. The Venn dia­gram mono­gram evolved out of this and informed the rest of the design, includ­ing icons, a map, and a flow chart. I knew let­ter­press was going to have the best qual­ity for such an inti­mate invi­ta­tion, so I designed with that in mind. I made the mono­gram con­sist of two col­ors, rep­re­sent­ing the two of us, and we over­printed the cir­cles to cre­ate a third color where they over­lap. The trans­par­ent nature of the ink allows them to blend beau­ti­fully. The reg­is­tra­tion was absolutely per­fect on each one, and it gave a cool effect of the lit­tle heart pop­ping out. We pack­aged them up in paper bag-colored envelopes and rub­ber stamped our logo and return address on them, keep­ing the feel con­sis­tent with the rus­tic style of the wed­ding. Overall, I think it really rep­re­sents my wife and I and our farm wed­ding per­fectly, and I think the design and pro­duc­tion turned out bet­ter than I could have imagined.

The pieces were let­ter­press printed by Ryan Howell at Rise and Shine Paper.