A few years ago a close friend asked me to design her wedding invitations and I excitedly said yes. That excitement was short-lived because it turned out to be a disastrous project. Soon after, I promised I would never design wedding invitations for a friend again. Never say never. After years of turning down friends left and right (when you're the graphic designer of the group you're always the go-to person for these kinds of projects) I finally said yes.
When my friend and bride-to-be, Nicole, came to me I was hesitant because of my past experience, but I have to say I was pretty intrigued by the tropical theme she was inspired by. Chatting about what she envisioned and possible color palettes had me looking forward to creating something lovely for her special day.
Because I've shared a lot of tropical inspiration on Fly I thought it would be fun to share the end result of how those leafy prints and tropical colors inspired me.
Tropical reds.
Tropical greens.
It was a last minute project so it had to be designed, printed, and packaged very quickly. So I collected some items I already had to develop my moodboard. No matter how quick the turnaround I always try to make some sort of moodboard that I can reference. If I'm stuck on a color or design element I can always go back to those images to see what I liked and how I can bring the essence of those elements I'm drawn to into my own design. Not to copy or duplicate but to help the process in developing color, layouts, and the energy I want to convey.
Some tropical images I was drawn to were bright hawaiian punch colors with big floral prints, as well as mysterious jungle greens with pops of pink. I knew I wanted to incorporate these elements in some way.
I decided I would create a pattern for each of the invitation package elements. The invite would have bright flowers on the back-side, the RSVP would showcase a dark blue-green fern pattern, and the directions card would feature bright green leaves. I really wanted the patterns to feel organic and textural so I went to my watercolors to create them. The illustrations above are how they looked scanned in, before all the color adjustments were made in Adobe Photoshop.
Once the colors were where I wanted them I created the patterns and began laying out the wedding info on the front-side of each card.
After the designs were approved we then discussed envelope colors which needed to compliment the patterns. The hot pink and teal (first image above) were the initial colors I recommended but then decided on a warmer pink and more subtle green for the envelopes.
It was so great working with my friend, Nicole, and I'm very happy with the final package. Most of all I'm thrilled that Nicole and her fiancé were so pleased with how everything came together.
Will I continue to do more wedding invitations for friends? I don't know, we shall see :).
See more tropical inspiration on Fly here and here.
