I thought I would be clever and use Neha and Randy's wedding hashtag as the title for today's entry. You likey?* This couple consists of the two coolest kids you'll ever meet, and they just got married in Napa last month, so I figured it was time to share the hip-hippest custom invitations I've ever designed. The catch is: I'm splitting the reveal into two posts (kind of like how this last season of Game of Thrones is split into two half-seasons). The reason being, I wanted to go over a little bit of the process, and since these were an absolute joy to create, I really could talk about these all day long (I won't, don't worry).
To kick things off, Neha and I had a phone meeting where she just spilled her ideas of what she wanted the invitations to look like, what her color scheme for the whole wedding was, and a rough timeline of when she'd need the invitation suite by. Based on what she told me over the phone, I researched and put together my inspiration for her wedding stationery look. I wanted to incorporate vibrant colors, geometric shapes/patterns, mid-century trends, and illustrations (similar to Sanjay Patel, per her request). But I also kept in mind to not fall into the generic Indian motifs of elephants, paisley, peacock, etc (and boy there was a lot of that when I surfed the Internet). Basically, I wanted to keep it modern and hip and colorful. So I sent her the above mood board and few examples of other wedding invites to get her feedback on typography and layout.
From there, she told me what parts she would love to see incorporated into the design (she was more drawn to simple shapes and lines) and I went on from there. I illustrated a "Bride Neha" and "Groom Randy" after not having made vectors from scratch in quite some time. I think it took me more than half an hour to do her one eye ball, which was what I started with, but after getting that eye done, it was a breeze to get the illustration style perfect. For the supporting design elements, Neha favored star bursts, so I used a few variations throughout the final invitation.
I chose non-serif fonts to continue with the clean, modern look. The layout flows very well, and I suggested to Neha that if the text is minimal, I would be able to achieve the maximum modern style. For the first round, I sent her three designs, the third one was what she landed on (and I promise will be revealed in a future post). Although the creations above did not make the final cut, I did recycle their elements into an insert she wanted mailed with the invite. I also made a matching RSVP card that completes the invitation suite. Read Part 2 --- here!
*I didn't want to bombard you with the meaning behind their wedding hashtag, #ramram2017, in case you really didn't care for it. For those of you who are interested, here it is: both Neha's and Randy's last names end with the same three letters --- r, a, m. Also, "Ram Ram" is an Indian greeting!
