Oh So Beautiful Paper

I love, love the invitations from Jaime (and her husband Ben) of A Desert Fete.  When I first saw Jamie and Ben’s invitations, I was completely struck by how they totally embodied their Joshua Tree wedding and reflected Jamie and Ben’s architectural and musical influences.  Jamie designed and printed the invitations herself using her trusty Gocco and a home printer.  The invitation suite included a main invitation, printed front and back, an RSVP postcard (both printed on heavy weight museum board), and map enclosure, all of which were bound together using artists tape.  Jaime was kind enough to send over a bit about the design and inspiration process (during her Spring Break no less!), so I’m turning it over to her!

From Jamie: So much of our wedding’s style came from my husband’s request to have red roses.  I am not sure why he was so sure of this, he has never shown a particular preference for roses.  He mentioned something about ‘desert rose.’  I think this must be a music reference…

When we chose our desert location I immediately thought of succulents and a crisp modern aesthetic, but the roses took us down a kind of rustic western/vintage cowboy road.  Ben is a musician and our love for music is a huge part of our lives.  Part of the allure of Joshua Tree for us (where we were married) is around the legend of late musician Gram Parson’s, whose style was very rock & roll/cowboy meets… glam?

With this in mind we then poured through graphic design books and ultimately fell in love with the style of Hatch Show Print.  I started with that idea and then added romantic flourishes.  (I did most of the designing in Adobe Illustrator, a skill I have picked up while studying architecture.)  We became Gocco crazy, and loved the vintage-esque patina that resulted in our lack of experience.  It was perfect.

For the main cards we used large sheets of museum board (cut to size by kinko’s machines).  We didn’t want to try and Gocco the maps as our inability to do good detail meant they might not communicate as well, but we wanted them to look intentionally different rather than just as an after thought.  I had previously found a roll (like, hundreds of feet long roll) of really really thin paper, like super thin crate paper the same color as kraft paper (At an industrial salvage store. FOR A DOLLAR). We used our regular canon printer and printed the maps I made in illustrator onto the kraft paper, then folded them up (like a map) and stuck them into a mini envelope.

We wanted the whole set to feel like a little object, so we banded all the cards and the mini envelope together with artist tape that is used on the backs of canvases and is self adhesive when you wet it.   We kept it really simple, this was especially important to Ben, every time I tried too complicate something, or add more elements and extras, he would reign me in on the concept of simplicity.

If either one of us had made these without the other ones input the designs would have been wildly different, so it is pretty neat to see the result of a true collaboration.  That and the influence of place, again they would have been so different but for a different venue, I think really made these what they are.

Sigh.  I love how element of the invitations, from the colors to the paper choice to the printing method, is so perfectly suited for Jaime and Ben’s wedding.  Thank you so much, Jaime, for sharing your invitations with us (and for putting up with all of my pestering over the past few months)!

{all images by Jaime/A Desert Fete}

1. jamie says:

   03/31/2009 at 10:43 AM

   you’re welcome! xo