Invitations: Engagement

Here's a monogram I designed recently for some Engagement Party invitations.

I always give out a questionnaire when I do invitations, so that I can tailor my design to the commissioner. This couple didn't really have anything in mind, no theme or suchlike, but they did tell me their favourite colours. So, since they also wanted something simple, I took those colours and turned to the good old language of flowers to design a monogram. 

So, here we have red roses, symbolising true love, blue violets for faithfulness, forget-me-nots, again for true love, arbutus, for 'you're the only one I love' and lilac, for the first emotions of love. Probably rather more romantic than the couple themselves, but I like to choose flowers that suit the situation. 

If you're interested in the fonts, the letters are in Recherche and and the scrolls are from Melany Lane Ornaments. 

I constructed all of the invitations yesterday, and here's a snap:

The bride-to-be had given me a sample of a DL invitation printed on shiny paper, and wanted something similar. I chose some Quill Metallique paper in Lavender, and opted to stick on the information rather than print straight onto the paper, as it gives a cleaner look, I find. To tie it all together I went over the letters of the monogram with a silver gel-pen to add a bit of sparkle. 

The mood choices that had been ticked on my questionnaire were 'romantic', 'simple', 'cheerful' and 'fun' so to keep everything a bit less formal I chose to typeset the invitation in Americana BT, rather than a more classic swirly or sans-serif font. That was also the reason for the + rather than an & in the monogram itself. 

The text of the monogram was created in Adobe Illustrator CS6, the flowers in Photoshop CS6 and the typesetting in inDesign CS6.