Letterpress wedding invitations have been popular for decades, if not centuries, and only continue to rise in popularity despite the fact that the big old presses have long since ceased to be manufactured, and the craft is now kept alive solely thanks to a small number of passionate artisans. The artisanal movement that has gained increasing traction over the last couple of decades has seen antiquated letterpress printing techniques return to the forefront of trends in the fashion, luxury, and event industries, where an emphasis on...
Read MoreLetters from Calabria
Sottovalutata…sottovalutata…that’s the word you most often hear in Calabria, arguably — and I now believe, truly — one of Italy’s most underrated destinations. It has nothing of the artful nobility of Florence, the jet set glitz and influencer appeal of Capri, or the minimal masserias of Puglia. But I don’t know…I did take over 2,000 pictures which none of these other destinations have yet inspired me to do. I loved and edited about 200 of them. And then I set myself the difficult task of selecting only 12 to put here.
Read MoreDestination Wedding Invitations
Destination weddings have become increasingly popular over the last decade, and creating destination wedding invitations usually requires an elaborate design process that often involves the close collaboration of the couple & their planning team, the stationery designer, the venue, and other vendors. Because the idea of traveling to Provence, Tuscany, or Cabo to celebrate your love with your friends and family is a fun idea - we have created this list of tips to help guide you through some of the nitty gritty details to consider, to hopefully keep the planning (and printing!) process fun too.
Read MoreSquare Wedding Invitations
If you’re wanting to do something different with your wedding stationery, opting for a square wedding invitation can be a strikingly simple way to stand out. When it comes to design, and more specifically to rethinking traditional design, sometimes the solution is as easy as switching up the format.
In a quick Google or Pinterest search, you’ll notice that most wedding invitations are usually about 5x7 or 6x9 inches and more often than not, in portrait orientation. Occasionally they’re flipped to landscape, perhaps to accommodate a long venue illustration, or simply to match the opening of the envelope so that everything follows the same orientation and does not need to be rotated upon opening. (A consideration perhaps, for only the very obsessive amongst us).
The next most popular shape, especially in recent years - is the arched invitation, and then of course there are the uniquely die-cut formats in organic or geometric forms. It’s rather surprising just how rare the square actually is! So of course we’re all about it, and it is the chosen format for the wedding invitation in our beloved stationery collection, The Editor.
Read MoreNatural Yet Sophisticated; Autumnal Wedding Inspiration from Upstate New York
Not sure what I love more about these images…the long neutral-tone tapered candles and dark florals proving that less is always and definitely more, the boldness of the typography beautifully standing out amidst the calm and understated decor, or the glorious autumnal foliage of the Catskill Mountains that reminds us nature’s scenography is tough to beat. Even the sparse scattering of tiny clouds seems somehow immaculately part of the design. Fall wedding inspiration is my absolute favorite, and the intentionality of every detail here speaks volumes. Grateful to the talented team of creatives who put this together…scroll through to see the full list of credits at the end, and a special guest dachshund appearance.
Read MoreSacred Modern; Architectural Chapels and Places of Worship from Around the World
The idea of getting married in a church has never really felt like me, but long rectangular windows, solemn concrete structures, sleek oakwood pews, downright heavenly skylights, and breathtaking views of nature most certainly do. Add to that the signature of modernist gods like Le Corbusier, Matisse, or Rothko and I’m basically sold. Here is a curated collection of chapels and other spiritual spaces from around the world to which and in which I’d gladly say I do. And if you do find yourself booking one of these for your wedding - call me, I know exactly what the invitations should look like.
I’ve borrowed most of the text below from various design magazines and blogs because I realized that writing about architecture isn’t really my forte, but I’ve linked to each of the articles at the end. I’d recommend reading them all as there are lots of interesting details and stories behind each project. Like the 10cm gap Le Corbusier left between the structure and the roof to allow a sliver of light in. Or the little shrine to the patron saint of winemakers that was included in the open air chapel in Uruguay. Or the vestments designed by Matisse that I’d petition to be adopted by priests and preachers worldwide.
Stay inspired and stay spiritual, or spirited —
A.
Read MoreModern Love - A Collaboration with Taylor & Porter and The Fall Bride
Poetic, playful, minimal, modern, architectural…really felt at home in this recent collaboration with Taylor&Porter and The Fall Bride, and incredibly grateful to all who were involved. Full list of team credits with links to their Instagram profiles is included below.
Read MoreA Tuscan Kind of Love
If, as the saying goes, a picture says a thousand words - then these beautiful images could fill an entire tome, and it was no easy feat having to select just a few to share in this post. Beyond honored to have collaborated on this spectacle of a shoot with the uniquely talented photographer Gradisca Portento, event designer and stylist Giulia Lazzarini, floral designer Mary Poppies, and bridal couturier Kaviar Gauche, all set upon the backdrop of a gorgeous villa in Tuscany. Be warned, they may inspire you to get married, move to Italy, buy a villa, and bathe yourself in orchids. Full list of creative credits at the end.
The invitation suite featured is one of our custom pieces, with all of our favorite things - a neutral palette, blind debossing, gold foil stamping, handmade paper, and the obligatory vellum band.
Read MoreA Romantic Oregon Wedding in Shades of Blue
Hand-painted acrylic brush strokes on a letterpress wedding invitation suite, menus and signage galore, an Oscar de la Renta wedding dress, a cocktail bar complete with oysters and custom signature ice cubes, endless florals, and oh so many shades of blue…this is Kelsi and John’s wildly romantic Oregon wedding - recently featured on Junebug Weddings.
Read MoreMinimal Wedding Invitations
Minimal wedding invitations have become a popular trend over the last decade or two, predominantly for couples seeking a more modern take on their wedding styling and stationery. They are largely characterized by concise and simple wording often typeset in small font sizes, large expanses of white (or negative) space, little to no decorative elements, patterns, or illustrations, and monochromatic, neutral, pale, or muted color palettes. Yum. What’s not to love.
Read MoreA Verdant Kind of Love; Scottish Highlands Elopement featured in Magnolia Rouge
We know the city elopement imagery well. The couple gets ready in a hipster design hotel in downtown New York, LA, London, or Paris…there are some intimate moments in front of city hall, a stylish walk to their favorite coffee shop, bakery, or pizza place…some laughter, some kisses, a few amused onlookers, great sunglasses, and inevitably, two sidewalk-served pretty coupes of champagne.
But now its time for something a little different. Moody and dramatic landscapes, verdant autumnal florals, all the warm and woody shades of terracotta, and just enough wind to blow you back into the pages of Wuthering Heights. There is something decidedly romantic and cinematic about this elopement in the Scottish Highlands, (in what was once the holiday home of Constance Spry), and yet all the details are strikingly modern, minimal, and right on trend.
A little sip of scotch in Ferm Living’s ripple glasses, Kamperett’s iconic wrap around Adelaide gown, Laure de Sagazan’s romantic angora gilet, Moss Floral’s effortlessly composed Ikebana-inspired bouquet, and our most minimal stationery collection, The Curator, offering all the white space, blind embossing, vellum layers, and soft nude tones to complement and balance out the richly verdant landscape and moody color palette. All this captured by one of our favorite wedding photographers, Taylor and Porter, on 35mm film.
Scroll down, fall in love, and discover this dramatic yet simple way to say I Do.
Luxury Wedding Invitations
When you search for luxury wedding invitations or stationery - you’re likely to come across a plethora of examples which include at least one, if not all of these attributes:
Elaborate floral or decorative patterns covering large portions of the invitation, inserts, or envelope - and often involving specialty techniques and materials such as die-cutting or handmade paper
A multitude of inserts and additional finishing details such as pocket enclosures, envelope liners, inner and outer envelopes, wax seals, as well as decorative haberdashery elements such as ribbons, lace, or pearls
Traditional center-aligned layouts often typeset in old style serif typography or flowing script, as well as traditional invitation wording that includes parents’ names, spelled out dates or times, and formal phrases such as “The honor of your presence is requested” or “The favor of a reply is requested by…”
A lot of gold!
The Letterist International, or Nomen est Omen?
I recently discovered that my business shares its name with a decidedly unique artist collective from the 1950s and well…if, as they say, nomen est omen…I can’t say that I mind.
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The Letterist International (LI) was a Paris-based collective of radical artists and cultural theorists between 1952 and 1957. It was created by Guy Debord and went on to join others in forming the Situationist International, taking some key techniques and ideas with it.
The group was a motley assortment of novelists, sound poets, painters, film-makers, revolutionaries, bohemians, alcoholics, petty criminals, lunatics, under-age girls and self-proclaimed failures.
In their blend of intellectualism, protest and hedonism—though differing in other ways, for instance in their total rejection of spirituality—they might be viewed as French counterparts of the American Beat Generation, particularly in the form it took during exactly the same period, i.e. before anyone from either group achieved notoriety, and were still having the adventures that would inform their later works and ideas.
The official base of the group was at 32, Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviéve, Paris. This was in fact the address of a bar, Tonneau d'Or, and indeed most of their time was spent either drinking in a number of bars in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, principally at Chez Moineau on the Rue du Four, or else simply walking the streets.
There was a serious purpose behind their ambulation. They developed the dérive, or drift, where they would wander like clouds through the urban environment for hours or sometimes even days on end. Among their most important texts on these matters were Debord's "Theory of the Dérive" and Ivan Chtcheglov's "Formulary for a New Urbanism.” In the latter, Chtcheglov advocated a new city where, as he wrote, "each person will live in his own personal 'cathedral'. There will be rooms that produce dreams better than drugs, and houses where it will be impossible to do anything but love."
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This article is borrowed (and a little abridged) from Wikipedia. I have great intentions to one day research this deeper and write my own piece…but until then feel free to visit the full Wiki one here.
Image gratefully borrowed from this article on The Spectator which is also an interesting read.
Folded Wedding Invitations
When it comes to choosing wedding stationery and particularly wedding invitations, the choice can be overwhelming. A design that speaks to you and matches your personalities and event styling is key, but it’s not only what’s written on the invitation that matters; the way the invitation itself is presented can tell a beautiful story. Folded wedding invitations, such as the ones in our beloved collection The Novelist, offer something striking, unique, and unexpected.
Why choose folded invitations?
There are a number of reasons to choose folded wedding invitations…
Read MoreCLUTCH; Tiny bags for a big day.
I mean, if your tiny bag doesn’t show up wearing a veil…what are we even doing here. A fun roundup of seven tiny bags fit for a big day, as envisioned through the aesthetic of each of our wedding collections - The Poet, The Editor, Curator, The Dreamer, The Vanguard, The Novelist, and The Hedonist.
This was a fun creative exercise in style: an attempt to translate the world of each collection ordinarily all captured through print and paper, into a tiny purse that might be seen bobbing down an aisle or runway. I thought about texture and craft and composition of course…but I was also thinking about the personalities of each of these characters more broadly, looking for designers and pieces that in their essence might share similar sensibilities…or spending habits! I was not, at all, thinking about price…which made this virtual shopping spree an extra delight.
Read MoreEmbossed Wedding Invitations
First of all, what defines an embossed wedding invitation? People often confuse the words embossing and debossing or use embossed mistakenly to refer to any type of letterpress printing, when in fact these are very different techniques. Embossing requires two print plates or dies - often referred to as the male and female, and the paper is placed between them to create a raised, relief effect when pressure is applied. The embossed text or graphic elements are pushed upwards through the paper, creating a tactile relief and dramatic shadows; perfect for creating striking and memorable wedding stationery.
Embossing can be done with inks, foils, or without color altogether, in which case it is called blind embossing. And blind embossing is our love language. Because of the two print plates which slot into each other, blind embossing allows for a deep impression even without the application of any ink or foil colors.
Embossing is most notably used in Braille - the tactile written language form invented for the visually impaired - which allows readers familiar with the Braille alphabet to interpret words and letters through touch.
Read MoreThat Arizona Sky; A timeless and elegant desert wedding
As a typography-focused wedding stationery designer, one of the first things I look at when we receive an enquiry are the words and letters. I scan through the names, dates, venues and addresses looking for something that might stand out - words or numbers I can immediately visualize and imagine looking great in a particular typeface, font size or layout in one of our collections. I get excited about names like Quinn & Braxton - a Q, R, X, and ampersand are a typographic feast! I like dates that are “tidy” - like 04.04.24, or ones with lots of curves in them, like 06.09.25. I like twos and threes and eights. Oh, eights! I love long and foreign names…and as far as I’m concerned, the more glyphs, the merrier. I love tightly packed letters and lines of text, so glyphs always present an interesting design challenge in getting everything to slot together nicely.
All of which is to say, this project - from the minute I laid eyes on the enquiry, was a dream. The wedding venue was in the SUPERSTITION MOUNTAINS. The welcome dinner was in, come on, PARADISE VALLEY. And the groom was Swedish, so they politely asked if we could do a dual-language version of the invitation, in English and Swedish. Swedish is glyph city!
Read More/Imagine; Discovering and falling in love with AI and Midjourney
Over the last week, I have spent many a late night playing with AI image generation on Midjourney with what can only be described as frenzied compulsion. Since my friend Winston showed me that you can set up an account on Discord, join a chatroom called Newbies, and type the phrase /imagine…to have a machine spit out a visual of whatever you imagine in less than a minute…I’ve been amazed, amused, addicted, impressed, and inspired beyond all measure.
Incidentally, the last time I remember feeling this way was exactly a decade ago, when I was sitting in the incredible bookstore Arcana in Los Angeles…and beginning to vaguely form in my mind what is today known as The Letterist. The wave of ideas and possibilities and imaginations of everything I could and would create was intoxicating. I’ve longed for that feeling ever since, and I never imagined something called Artificial Intelligence would turn out to be what did it for me.
Things I coveted at Maison&Objet 2024
The last time you heard from me about Maison&Objet, I was in the back of a cab on my way to the middle-of-nowhere outside Paris where the world famous design fair is held. I posted a quick selfie, thinking that this was only the first of many photos and videos I’d share in my Instagram stories throughout the rest of the day. I thought I was being quite the martyr in fact, braving the cold wind and slippery slushy streets just to vicariously take all of you to the fair. I never willingly leave home before 9am. And it’s not like I have any real reason to attend a trade fair. I was doing all this, for you.
But the first thing I saw when I walked in and had my ticket scanned was a sign saying that photography was forbidden. I was tempted to steal a few sneaky ones anyway…but then I noticed that individual exhibitors also often had signs prohibiting photography, so I decided not to risk it. The whole show was also insanely huge and overwhelming, so I decided it was perhaps a blessing to put the camera away and just try take in as much as I could with my eyes.
I decided to just take out a pen and paper and write down the names of brands that caught my eye.
Here are just a few of them for you.
I have NOT been able to stop thinking about this yellow saucepan.
Ax
Read MoreL'amour, champagne, et disco forever after; Rat & Boa Founder Stephanie Bennett's Wedding Featured in VOGUE France
We had just launched The Hedonist collection when I first heard from Stephanie and Tom, and within minutes of our first call…I knew I had just met two veritable hedonists who would allow me to truly bring this new collection to life. It was obvious right away, this was going to be a party with no end time. They had chosen Le Grand Banc for their wedding venue - an exclusive private hamlet in the Luberon which has long been a stomping ground for artists and royalty alike. Hello Princess Margo, and hello real Warhols on the wall.
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