*Ahem* confessions over – let’s talk design…

Two of the most popular emerging design trends in recent years have undoubtedly been typography and illustration. The evidence is all around us – in the media, in our glossy magazines and even lining the streets upon which we walk.

The Not So Olden Days.

A few years ago if a designer had presented a concept for a new billboard campaign that solely relied on a few well chosen fonts with no images at all, they’d be laughed out of the boardroom with a P45 wedged up inside their little beanie hat (all designers wore a little beanie around this time – outdoors, indoors and regardless of season). Likewise, if asked to create some loosely hand drawn imagery for a new brand or product launch, said designer would scratch at head through beanie hat and wonder why you hadn’t gone to talk to an illustrator instead.

Of course the art of typography and indeed the art of illustration are not new ideas – they are art forms from a bygone era, a time of letraset, letterpress and pens, ink and paints – a time long before MacBooks and Adobe Photoshop. But, just like with fashion, trends cycle and what was old becomes new and today’s designer has to be au fait with all of these disciplines to stay on trend, and the wedding stationery business is no exception.

Let’s have a look at how these two very different trends are starting to have a real impact on your W-day design.

1. Typographic Design.

Typography is very much an art from. Font choice, letter spacing, line spacing, colour and placement are key to a successful design and these subtle skills of judgement are not to be sniffed at. If you don’t get it just right, quite frankly it can look rubbish…

copyright Yield Ink.

And this movie inspired typographic design above from Yield Ink is anything but rubbish! The spacing, stripped back colour scheme and the way the various fonts interact all appear effortless – a sure sign of the craftsmanship required to produce a design as clean as this. Yield Ink utilise traditional crafts and even have a vintage letterpress on which they produce much of their work. Snazzy.

copyright RSVP Candy.

In the example above the emphasis of the work is firmly placed upon the text. They say that a picture paints a thousand words, but it’s a shame to miss out if the thousand words are all as pretty as these ones by RSVP Candy.

A real stand out wedding of 2011 for me was the marriage of Ruth and Rob. Both designers at Raw Design Studio, they branded their wedding to perfection. Typography became a theme that ran through the whole event. They even created a little R&R logo. Very sweet, very creative and absolutely bang on trend.

View the whole wedding, shot by Shaw and Shaw, by clicking HERE.

Next up, combining text with a single repeated heart shape in various colours and patterns gave the invitations below, designed by Rose Mountague, a country garden bunting-esque appeal that totally nailed the brief.

In this beautifully decorated wedding that we featured back in August 2011 you can see how typography suits a back garden rustic affair just as much as it does a cool contemporary wedding.

View the whole wedding, shot by Dominique Bader, by clicking HERE.

2. Illustrative Design.

The other design-trend-of-the-moment can be as basic or as intricate as your imagination (or perhaps your designers imagination) will allow.

The great thing with illustration is that we can all have a go at it, and with modern printing and production facilities it may well be the case that, if you posses at least one creative bone in your body, you may well be able to knock up some wedding stationery that is actually pretty good, and of course very, very personal to you. Try it – you might surprise yourself!

View the whole wedding, shot by navyblur, by clicking HERE.

Bryony and Jamie created an illustration that they reproduced throughout their extensive range of home made wedding stationery. Just like Ruth and Rob, they created themselves a little wedding brand. With the right choice of materials, knowing your limits and by playing to your strengths, your home made branding can look absolutely spot on.

We recently shared with you the wedding of Caro and Simon – and they received such a response to their umbrella themed hand finished wedding stationery, that Caro and an illustrator friend, who designed and created the items have decided to start offering the service to others – if you would like more information then you can drop the girls an email at foldedpaperdesigns@yahoo.com.

View the whole wedding, shot by Debs Iveljar, by clicking HERE.

I also love the design below, in a similar vein of illustration – almost a call back to the simple and innocent quality of a school exercise book doodle. This is from another RMW real wedding and the design is by Kate Blake.

View the whole wedding, shot by Joanna Brown Photography, by clicking HERE.

Right, I have one last thing to show you today, and if you are digging the free style, simple and fun illustrative vibe we are on, you are going to LOVE this.

The Little Peach is a brand spanking new wedding stationery designer, specialising in screen-printing. I took to these designs like a designer to a beanie hat – because having done a bit of screen-printing in my time (I went to art college don’t you know ) I truly do understand the time and skill that goes into creating each of these magnificent prints. They are all original little works of art.

copyright The Little Peach.

I love the simple colour schemes, the interesting materials, the witty and fun illustrations and the attention to detail. Everything, and I mean everything is hand finished. I am officially in stationery heaven .

It is easy to think that your wedding stationery starts and stops with save the dates and invitations but that is not necessarily the case. If you wish, you can incorporate a design that touches every single aspect of your wedding day.

I guess this leads me nicely onto a few final thoughts…

How important to you is your wedding stationery? It’s hard coming from a design background for me not to place it RIGHT UP THERE (above the dress maybe…?) I would be interested to hear where it sits with you peeps who are currently in the throws of W-day planning.

And who is thinking about making their own stationery?

Of course I have only shared the tiny body of work that I am currently pouring over, there are loads of styles, designs and great stationers out there, so please share anything you’ve seen that you like. That’s what it’s all about folks.

Adam.

When Leckie and Jack of Pocket Typewriter (and of the Notebook inspired photoshoot fame) sent through their Love Lust List application I instantly fell in love with their delicious designs. But the item that really caught my blog queen eye was the love notes.

So whimsical, so dreamy, so very very Rock My Wedding.

AND WE HAVE ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY TO GIVE AWAY TO ONE LUCKY WINNER!!!!!!

See? How good are they?

I’m thinking super cute to attach to favours (pots of jam anyone?) tied around fancy napkins, incorporated into escort tags to send you to that particular “love” table…..

Hell, wear them as earrings if you like*, you will have ONE. HUNDRED. AND. TWENTY. OF. THEM!!!

Ahem.

And here are Leckie and Jack to tell you all about how you can enter.

Pocket Typewriter’s Love Quote Competition!!!

Breaking News!!!! Pocket Typewriter, creators of loveable wedding stationery have launched these fantabulous love tags on NotOnTheHighStreet and to celebrate they are giving away 120 for you to use at your very own wedding!!!

Pocket Typewriter have a whole load of gorgeous stationery and bits & bobs to make your wedding day special to you. Check them out at Pocket Typewriter or contact Leckie or Jack on info@pockettypewriter.co.uk and they will be happy to hear from you!

Stationery – Pocket Typewriter

Photography – Jade Webb

Competition ends midnight on Sunday the 10th July.

So then lovelies, get quoting!

Big Love is Priceless Love

Charlotte xxx

* Anyone that has witnessed my vast lobe candy collection would understand this was actually not a joke.

How pretty? I love…

Of course, Paperbird don’t just create Origami invitations but there is something really special about the lightness of these designs and the clear effort that goes into origami, that just makes them stand out massively amongst the sea of often uninspiring invitations available.

And it’s not just invitations that Paperbird offer – the range extends to place cards, menus and everything you could need to set the tone for a beautiful day. I’m thinking they would look stunning in an all-white scheme punctuated with super bright accents… soft and modern all at once.

Eve, the creative genius behind Paperbird, told me a little bit more about her designs…

We make each origami invitation by hand in the UK. Each design is created from a crisp cotton organza and hand folded, we then stitch a ribbon to each and add a personalised tag. We can create some bespoke ideas as well which have ranged from microphones to boats!!

We actually also have a very broad range of clients with many from abroad – Australia, France, Italy and America. Our laser cut wish tree has proved very popular since we launched it and is available in wood, card and acrylic starting from £100 for just the tree.

We love wish tree’s here at Rock My Wedding – they’re such a great way of getting your loved ones to leave a message and we think this one is particularly pretty.

Paperbird are currently in the running for an award at the County Brides Awards and if you love them as much as we do, you can cast a vote for them (or your preferred wedding supplier – there are lots of categories!) before June the 7th.

Have you found something unique for your invitations? Do tell, we always love to hear about new paper pretty!

Yours Truly,

Rebecca
xoxo

P.S. Paperbird don’t just do origami – they actually make stunning laser cut invitations too, so do head on over to the site and have a look round at all their bespoke creations!

And instead of just letting her do her thing, I decided I would chip in, because I’m really excited to be sharing Eva’s beautiful letterpress designs. I am a bit of a stationery geek and these designs are just beautiful. Ranging from the vibrant and bold to subtle and sophisticated, very pretty or modern cool, each one is as impressive as the last.

However, I think that’s enough from me… I’ll hand you over to Eva herself and then please do head on over and check out her site.

Eva Slade was born out of a passion for pattern, paper and design. Wedding stationery should be so beautiful it makes your heart skip a beat. We offer a full suite of co-ordinated stationery or a bespoke service where we create a design especially for your day. Based in London, we cover all of the UK and Ireland.

From traditional elegance to vintage chic our collections have something for everyone. And at the moment we have a 20% launch discount on all orders placed before 1 July 2011!

Wow – that’s a great discount and makes paper pretty that you thought might be out of reach, that bit more affordable.

Brides, bring back the paper pretty!

Yours Truly,

Rebecca
xoxo

Eva Slade is a Rock My Wedding sponsor and this is a sponsored post.

Always a brilliant idea, the Tea Towels started off with a very individual style, which unique though it was, was quite specific. Since expanding the range there are heaps of new designs in really varied styles to suit nearly every type of wedding you can imagine!

Via Email, Karen from Wedding Tea Towels told me about the inspiration behind the new designs…
‘We have teamed up with some of our amazing designer buddies and asked them to create their own designs so they are in a totally different style to our original designs and they are just brilliant!’

I’m absolutely thrilled Wedding Tea Towels have expanded their range of designs, particularly as they make a great way of being eco friendly in your wedding choices. Previously being suited to quite a relaxed and rustic style of wedding, there are now options which lend themselves to a more traditional day in the elegant scrolling design above, or the majestic Peacocks below.

Vintage wedding? Try the postcard design (particularly clever when it arrives in the post I think!) Or if you’re still looking for a really fun vibe, the top two designs would be hard to beat.

So can we tempt you readers?

As ever, let us know your thoughts on the new designs and if you’ll be considering them for your wedding….

Yours Truly,

Rebecca
xoxo

P.S Real wedding pretty coming up ASAP lovelies!

Right from when the sparkly E-rings were firmly placed on our eager fingers we both knew that our invitation suite choosing/deciding/perving (!) was going to be one of the most enjoyable parts of planning….

And it so was.

Of course we understand just like everything else: that certain aspects of W-day are important to some and not to others, for Rebecca and I however it was always a given that a considerable amount of our budget was going on what we feel sets the tone for the entire occasion.

Completely inspired by Kirsty’s Travel themed affair I remembered we have been meaning to post about the fabulous Dottie Creations for quite some time.

Mandy and Zoe the designers and founders of Dottie have some brand new collections to add to their already diverse selection of beautiful Big Day items and we would like to share our favourites with you gorgeous lot this Wednesday.

Love Mail

This to me is vintage inspired at its most delicious and I could think of nothing better than Mr Posty delivering one of these on a cold, bleak winters morning….

Dottie Creations: We treasure our company name Dottie. Not only does it reflect our love of all things vintage it also sums up our personalities perfectly, a quality our customers seem to really like (we hope)!
 
We both have a real passion for design , photography, all things pretty and anything chocolate (what girl doesn’t?), which can be a bit issue when we have over one hundred Green and Blacks chocolate favours to wrap!
 
There are two side to our business and Dottie Creations is the stationery side to our business. Everything we produce is designed and printed by us which allows us to be much more flexible during the customer consultation process. We offer a range of ‘off-the-peg’ designs which can be customised with your choice of colours, fonts and wording or if you are looking for something a little bit different and totally unique we also offer a bespoke design service.  

Whichever option you choose, all of our designs come in a huge array of wedding stationery products such as invitations, order of service, table plans, favours, guests books…. (and much more) to complete the look on your big day.
 
The other section to our business is Dottie Photography. Our photography style is a mix of reportage, traditional and quirky, vintage fun. Every wedding package we offer is for full day coverage and also includes digital enhancement (skin smoothing, bingo wings removal (!) etc) and the application of special vintage effects which we think elevates your images to something just a little bit special.
 
To our delight we’re finding more and more of our clients are picking us for both stationery and photography which gives us the most wonderful opportunity to help you style your wedding day. It means we become quite a big part of the planning process from creating a bespoke design/theme  to  capturing it all on camera. The best bit about the whole process is that we are able to get to know you really well so that by the time the big day arrives we ‘re just like part of the furniture and you feel totally at ease with us and our Dottie ways!

Sweetheart

And for those that prefer something a little bit more rock n roll then there’s the Tattoo design from the “sweethearts” collection. As you may have read above Mandy and Zoe are also talented photographers ( I know TWO cool jobs!) so where ever they can will work on both your paper goods and capturing every special moment.

Clients and childhood sweethearts Danielle and Liam were model-perfect for the lovely Dottie ladies to try out this new concept and I for one cannot WAIT to see their W-day.

Yes I know…

The hoola hoop. An essential prop for any future engagement shoot.

Do let us know what stationery designs are inspiring you at the moment and how important you feel your invitations/table plan/table numbers/menu’s/order of service ( delete as appropriate) are in making your special day complete.

Let’s start the paper debate people!

Big We Heart Mail Love

Charlotte xxx

Every peice of work is unique and starts as a pen & ink illustration drawn by hand, giving a personal, artistic quality that you won’t find anywhere else.

You can get involved and add your own ideas to the design process to ensure you get exactly what you want. What you will receive at the end is a stunning, professional and accurate map that will add an extra sparkle to any invitation, and provide a wonderful keepsake to remember your special occasion.

I just love how personal these are as you can specify all the little details you want included, incorporating your wedding style, themes and colours, plus the details about your lives together that make you a couple. According to which package you choose you then receive a CD with the map as a .jpg image for professional quality printing and every package includes a signed high quality print of your finished map – a brilliant keepsake of the effort you put into the details.

Both the stationery and Hand-drawn Maps come in a variety of styles, some more colourful and quirky like those shown here, or if you love them, but want to stay in keeping with a simpler theme, you can work within one or two colours to tone with and existing stationery design.

Special Offer for Rock My Wedding Readers!

Best of all Hand-drawn Maps are offering a special offer for Rock My Wedding readers… 20% discount on all orders until 31st Dec 2010 (valid on all artwork design but excluding printing.) To take advantage of this generous offer quote promotional code MAPS-ROCK-2010 when placing your order!

Yours Truly

Rebecca
xoxo

Coquette Paper and Press offer a variety of wedding stationery designs that, for me, suit almost any wedding style, encompassing our current love for all things retro vintage and reminiscent of days gone by, right through to more modern or romantic text based designs with gorgeous fonts. Katy, the lady behind the designs, has written a little bit about Coquette Paper and Press so I’m going to hand you straight over…

Coquette Paper & Press was born when a lifelong obsession with stationery collided with sisters and friends who were getting married and discovering that their wedding stationery options were as limited as they were uninspiring. As a self-confessed font-geek, hopeless romantic and lover of all things stationery, I couldn’t help but get involved in making sure they found their heart’s desire.

Alongside letterpress, thermographic, lithographic & giclee printing, I also offer “Print at Home” designs for brides looking to save on the pennies.

It is so good to see a product as good as this available on a more cost effective basis for those planning brides who don’t have the biggest budget to stretch around. It just goes to show, you don’t have to compromise on DIY paper with a smaller budget. And for those of you who can afford a bespoke option, such as the Kitty, the sky’s the limit in terms of the creativity you can show off. I would be so impressed to receive an invitation like these, I think I’d have to sit down and just gaze at it. For me, every wedding invitation sets the tone for the wedding and my brain would literally explode imagining what was to come in a day that started with aCoquette Paper and Press design!

Tell us your favourite… text based, retro graphics or scrapbook style?

Yours Truly,

Rebecca
xoxo

With a selection of vintage linens, appliqued ditsy florals, buttons, beading and embroidery Vicky was able to make some the most delicious invitations and favours in all of the land, suitable for the very fairest of them all…… the discerning fairytale bride.

Vicky Trainor :The idea behind our new little collection ‘made with love’ arrived one day whilst sorting and organising my endless boxes of collected haberdashery. At the bottom of this box was my little sewing case that I made when I was 7 years old. I spent hours, when I was younger, collecting and making endless pieces, some useful some not so useful, pressing flowers, organising my grandma’s button box….

We were starting to work on ideas, at the time, for new collections for 2011-2012 – we wanted to create something very different to our current printed collections and we had been researching embroidery and haberdashery from the 40’s and early 50’s and, from this, ‘made with love’ was born. This collection is the first to be created from our new ‘Vintage Drawer’ label.

A little collection of linen booklet invitations, favour sewing cases, embroidered table numbers, lavender bags, linen and ribbon place ties and named chair back ties and still more to be created. Each individual piece made, here in the studio, will be a bespoke one-off item, made from new and vintage linens and haberdashery finds.

Vicky
x

I mean really – I would die for a favour as pretty as this.

And if not a gift for every guest how about a little something for your maids? a beautiful and undoubtedly useful keepsake.

Vicky Trainor is offering Rock My Wedding fairytale brides a very generous 10% off all stationery ordered before the 31st January, that includes the Made With Love range.

Just mention RMW when you enquire.

Big I can’t-even-tell-you-how-impressed-I-would-be-to-receive-a-vintage-draw-invitation-Love

Charlotte xxx

***

Rock My Wedding Sponsor Vicky Trainor has just launched a new selection of colours called Miss Fondant for her very popular Vicky Trainor Rose collection. You lucky readers are getting an exclusive sneak peek before even the magazines! Vicky has very kindly offered all the Rock My Wedding readers 10% off all orders received before the 30th of September 2010.

Even better, Vicky has been super generous and is going to GIVEAWAY 50 free save the dates in one of the new colour ways. All you have to do is head over to the site and check out the new Miss Fondant collection and drop a comment below stating which colour way you would like to win this fabulous prize in…

There’s four colour stories to choose from –
Lemon Cream
Fondant Fancy
Citrus & Rosehip
Raspberry Cream

Head on over to the Vicky Trainor website to get browsing or look at her other collections and you can see more images of the collection on her very pretty blog. Commenting will close this TODAY.

Yours Truly,

Rebecca
xoxo