Matthew from A Fine Press sent over the fabulous business identity and stationery that he recently designed for wedding photographer Karen Ard.  Karen loved the idea of incorporating a wax seal (such a great detail!) and doing something travel-inspired, so Matthew came up with an identity inspired by Southern California surf culture and business cards inspired by luggage tags.  The entire suite was letterpress printed on kraft paper in soft and beachy colors.  So lovely!

From Matthew: Karen was particularly drawn to the idea of a wax seal to bring her business stationery together.  She approached me with the idea of doing a travel-inspired visual identity and stationery suite that maintained a nod to her SoCal location.

For inspiration, we drew heavily from postage and postmarks from around the world.  We loved the idea of using the circle of a postmark as our starting point.  A friend’s surf video got me thinking about all the great surf-culture branding out there and the image of a hibiscus blossom on a longboard provided us with a clear direction.

Karen wanted colors to reflect the beach and had suggested we start with seaglass colors.  From there, we settled on teal, with brown as a second color along with cream and kraft-substrates.  For a typeface, we went with the Deco-styled Aviano Sans, which I found extremely evocative of vintage travel.

The print pieces were done on French Paper’s Muscletone Kraft with PopTone Whip Cream envelopes.  In addition to Karen’s official colors, I printed her 1-color logo in transparent white on her thank you cards to make it pop while keeping it neutral in color.  Her luggage tag-inspired business cards were printed with her handwriting filling in the important details.

Thank you so much Matthew!

Photo Credits: Karen Ard