Monday, September 5, 2011

Wedding Details: Website!

One of my favourite details to work on was our wedding website. I haven't done much web design at all in the last year, especially coding (at work we have a web guy for that...lol! He implements all my designs for me). Anyways, I really do love coding, especially the simple stuff (html and css) so I was excited to build our wedding website! I went cheap, because I'm dutch to the core, and hosted it under my own portfolio website (why buy a domain for a temporary website?!).

I had to do some "soul searching" to decide what to include on the site. In the end, I just had fun building it and found it a good way to share our engagement photos and our "love story." It also seemed like a good place to share last minute details in case the weather didn't turn out how we planned...but of course it was a lovely day!

My first draft of the site had "Wednesday, august 8 2011" on the top of it...um oops! I guess I was thinking more about html tags than the actual date of my wedding...lol! thanks to sisters for calling me out on it before I went live! 

Click on the photo to view the site:

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Wedding Details - Bookmark Favours

Rather than spend money one a party favour that would be consumed in 3 minutes, forgotten on the table, or die in a cupboard (favour tree's anyone? I've killed a few...), we decided to  support the International Justice Mission in the name of our guests. I've seen this done before at weddings I've attended, and each time I've appreciated it a lot. Its a reminder to think beyond ourselves in the middle of all the blessings we have, which are so obvious at weddings! Our wedding verse was Philippians 2:1-4, which includes in part "...in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others."

We both felt this was a good way to implement what we are committing to founding our marriage on - our faith, and the many ways Jesus calls us to live differently in this life.

I designed bookmarks with this information and put them at each place setting, so our guests still had something to take home. I think they turned out great :)


I printed them on a printer at work, so they were low-res but I keep getting told I'm the only one that can tell. lol!!

Sharalee got a few good photos of how we set them up, wrapped snuggly at each spot:

Friday, September 2, 2011

Wedding Details - Invitations

Finally! The wedding is over, I can breathe, and I can share with you my wedding invitations!

The invitation is a tri-fold accordian design based on the wedding design theme and some of our engagement photos. We got married outside on a farm, and had the reception in a barn, so I wanted the design to have a country feel to it. I didn't want to go all out "country western" though! The finished design was perfect, and I am so happy with how it expressed not only our wedding, but us as well.

Here is the finished piece:

and some more detailed studio shots without the ribbon and twine:

The design could have been done 2-colour on the press, but since I was only printing roughly 150, I printed them digitally at Globe Printers and took advantage of the four-colour process and added a full-colour photo and a creme tint in some of the light areas. Globe is awesome by the way, I work with them regularly at work and highly recommend them.

Hope you like them! As I've mentioned before, I really enjoyed designing the invites and look forward to working with brides in the future on wedding print pieces! Drop me a line if you're interested :)

Thursday, September 1, 2011

CD sleeve designs

From time to time I get to design CD sleeves for single Chuck Swindoll sermon messages. Its different than your typical CD sleeve design...for one, its not music. Two, we package them in DVD cases so its not the typical size you'd expect. Lastly, as always, I am working within the design constraints and standards of our own and the US office and don't have as much creative freedom as when working with the Insights Magazine. 

But here are some of my favourite CD's I've designed in the past year! I haven't included any designs based mainly on stock photography (which most of them are unfortunately). But these are illustration-heavy, or my own photography! They are all amazing messages as well, but I think the last one is my favourite.

All are available for purchase at insightforliving.ca, or by clicking the photo.


 
(this photo was taken by me: those are my parents wedding clothes!)