May 16, 2013
There is no two ways around it- this Spring has been pretty crumby. Although I am the most pale person I know, I’m still craving some warm sun so I’m in luck as I get to sneak off to Palm Springs this weekend for a little girls trip! I’ve had several clients get married in the area so I’m excited to check it out and get inspired. Now I just need to find my SPF 70… wah wah.
May 13, 2013
Now this was a fun one! Every good photographer needs a strong logo to help set them apart. Janice Yi Photography approached us earlier this year to create a unique and whimsical logo for her photography business. What is even better is that last year Janice was one of our Brides, already knowing one another made it even more personal.
Whenever I work on a branding project, it’s important to really take the time to truly understand the personality and message the client trying to portray. In Janice’s case she wanted to capture her love of all things French while still playing off her whimsical, romantic aesthetic. I created a few different looks that I felt each expressed Janice’s business and let her choose what option worked best for her. The first logo set draws upon a French decorative style with swirling flourishes and vintage French inspired type.
I love the second set of logos! It was inspired by vintage baroque forms and then I peppered the design with sketches of the photographic equipment Janice uses on a daily basis. I love the clever aspect of this as it merges her love of French design with photography.
The final set of logos was Janice’s choice. We took inspiration from The Little Prince, with the stars and free flowing shapes. I also love how the circular shape here speaks to the shape of a camera lens.
April 25, 2013
I know we’ve all seen a lot of kraft paper these days but, man, I still kind of just love it. Julie was one of our clients from last year who came to me with a very distinct vision. She knew she wanted to screen print white ink on kraft paper and to pair that with hand lettering and illustrations. With that as our inspiration, I set out to create a fun suite that incorporated her whimsical vision. Julie collaborated with the amazing Megan of Makewells for the calligraphy on her envelopes. I absolutely love how it turned out! It was so inspired and complimented the suite. Julie sourced some amazing vintage stamps to pull the entire suite together. My favorite part is the coral envleope with the arrow and heart liner. It reminds me of my notebook doodles from seventh grade {add in some “JTT” references and we’d be all set}. Overall, I love how fun this suite is while still evoking the feel of a Florida wedding.
April 16, 2013
Yesterday was a weird one. Having grown up in the Boston area, it was hard to digest all the craziness that happened. Sending lots of love and support to the people Boston- stay strong!
pictures via Gothamist
April 10, 2013
Sometimes a client tells you about their wedding and you kind of just want to scheme a way to get invited… that was pretty much the case with Sarah and Todd. They had an amazing wedding on Martha’s Vineyard over Labor Day weekend last year. The weekend started with a welcome party at the Bride’s family’s home followed by a Lobster Bake on Friday evening {with custom bibs- amazing} and a lovely wedding ceremony at the Allen Farm in Chilmark on Saturday night. For Sarah’s invites, she wanted them to feel nautical and reminiscent of the Vineyard without having them feel over the top in any one direction. For her invites we created a clean, letterpress invitation with lots of negative space. My favorite element are the blind impressed seagulls in the top right hand corner- so charming. Sarah wanted everything to feel contained so we put all the pieces in a cream invitation folder that matched back to then main and RSVP envelope. When it came to her envelope liner, we had used a vintage MV map on their save the dates and decided to repurpose that here for a sense of continuity, which I loved. Overall, I love how clean and open this suite feels while still evoking the warm, special feeling of a Vineyard wedding.
April 5, 2013
There is nothing better than working with a couple from their save the dates all the way to their day of elements. I love seeing everything come together at the wedding, I always feel like a proud Mama. Lauren and Jay sent over pics from their big wedding at The Green Building. All the amazing photos below were taken by their very talented photographer, Trent Bailey.
March 22, 2013
Well it’s actually a bit of a funny story: A girl walks into a bar… no really, I met Jamie last year at a bar in Brooklyn to discuss her wedding invites. We drank warm beers and discussed her rustic, Upstate vision. At the time Jamie was head of events and catering and The City Bakery in Manhattan. She was all business and I knew she’d be great to work with. A few months later, we moved into a new apartment and I noticed Jamie’s unique last name on the neighboring mailbox. I sent her a quick email and asked if she happened to live in this building (thinking probably “no” since what are the odds) and sure enough, we were neighbors. Jamie was pumped because she got free shipping on her invites and I was excited to know someone in the building. We became friends and after Jamie’s wedding she started telling me about her idea to open a catering business. Naturally I was all about it and offered to do the branding. I figured she’d take a several months, get her plans sorted out and then baby step into the process of owning a business. Clearly, I didn’t quite know Jamie yet. This girl pushed on the gas and went full steam ahead! With clients like Tory Burch, J.Crew and Coach, Jamie’s business is already a huge success. Poppy’s Catering + Events in located at 243 Degraw Street in the Cobble Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn. They offer drop off catering in your home, office, or on set, as well as full service catering for corporate events, weddings, showers, etc. handling all details from the staffing to the decor. The amazing setups that Jamie and her team come up with never cease to amaze me. Her eye for detail is impeccable and every event looks better than the next. I also really love reaping the benefits of their leftovers.
When working on Jamie’s branding, it was pretty easy. She has a very clean and simple aesthetic and wanted everything on the logo to serve a purpose. I was gearing up for a long branding meeting but Jamie walked in and pick something from the first round and that was that. As the business continues to grow, I’ll share more pictures of the evolution of the Poppy’s branding. But here is your first taste of Swiss Cottage Designs new bestie: Poppy’s Catering + Events!
The Poppy’s Logo:
Logo Variations:
Poppy’s Website {complete with a pic of Poppy himself, Jamie’s grandfather and inspiration for her business}:
The owner, Jamie, and her number one gal, Rachel:
A few pics in and around Poppy’s:
follow Poppy’s on instagram @poppyscatering
March 19, 2013
I am so excited to share my very own wedding invites on my blog today. After spending the last few years designing for others, it was a surreal experience to be my own {potentially worst} client. Nole, from the amazing blog Oh So Beautiful Paper, shared our invites yesterday but here is a little recap. And by little I mean really long winded, my apologies in advance.
Our invites were quite possibly the hardest thing I had to do for my wedding. Given the fact that I design wedding invitations for a living, there was a bit of “gentle ribbing” from friends and family about their expectations. And frankly, designing for yourself is very hard! We didn’t really have a theme going into our wedding but one thing that kept coming up was music and the colors black and white. Our save the date was based on the Rob Base song “It Takes Two” so we weren’t afraid to get a little weird. For the actual wedding, I used a line from a Biggie song that ended up being a repeating theme throughout our invites and day of pieces.
I knew I wanted the invite to be focused around a hand drawn illustration since that is what I love to do. We got married in the DUBMO neighborhood of Brooklyn which has some pretty awesome views. There is one iconic street that showcases the Manhattan Bridge with the Empire State Building nestled below; I chose that as our main image to draw. The invitation was printed in two parts then duplexed to #220 and printed on Crane Lettra. One of the important things for me was to have the invite sound like how we both actually speak. We have a very dry sense of humor and we really wanted that to come out in our copy.
For the RSVP card, I created a mini-letterpress record complete with glassine sleeve. I paired this up with a petite black, square envelope and had our return address letterpressed in matte silver on the front. The record was little, roughly 4″ x 4″ so it was easy enough for our guests to ship back to us.
My personal favorite detail was the envelope liner! My friend is a photographer and when looking through her pictures, I saw one of a guy with knuckle tattoos. As soon as I saw that, I knew I wanted to incorporate that same idea into our suite somehow. One I realized that “BROOKLYN” fit on the knuckles, it was a done deal! I really had my heart set on black envelopes so I knew addressing them would be an issue. In came the ridiculously talented Jenna of Love, Jenna calligraphy. She created the perfect look for our suite complete with little details to match back to our design.
We did not do a wedding website but instead provided our guests with an insert chalk full of how to spend a perfect winter weekend in NYC + Brooklyn. This was printed flat on kraft paper.
I finished the suite off with a black + gold twine {from the awesome Knot + Bow} and had a die cut tag created to hold everything together. I love little silhouettes and create one of our hair to use throughout our suite as a continual theme. Overall, we wanted our invites to feel classic, set the tone for our wedding but most importantly to make our friends and family laugh.
The last few bits are from some of our day of elements that we snuck into this shoot. I hope you like everything!
March 14, 2013
Hello! Back from the depths of the design underworld. I’ve been keeping my head and pen down over the last few weeks leaving this poor little blog in the dust. But alas, we are back!
I have been wanting to share Lauren and Jay’s wedding invitations since they were still in the proof form! Lauren and Jay {stars of our comic book save the date} had a blow out bash at Brooklyn’s The Green Building back in October. When I say this bride left no stone unturned, I mean it. She dotted every I and crossed every T when it came to this wedding which made designing her suite incredibly easy. Lauren kept it pretty simple in terms of the overall look but killed it with the details. She knew right away that she wanted to have them letterpress printed. I drew a brick pattern that played off the look of The Green Building and had that blind impressed over the entire invite. Next up, we kept the typefaces very clean and simple. At first glance, it might come off as a very minimal invite but the more you dive in, the more the piece comes together. Lauren was using a “vampy” Cranberry for a punch of color so we had the edges painted with that detail in mind. Next up- the envelopes! Lauren had her heart set on using the very talented Love, Jenna for her envelopes and I have to say, she could not have done a better job! Jenna even added her touch on the invite by adding the “and” to the main piece. Jenna was inspired by Lauren’s vampy punch color and calligraphed her envelopes with a deep Cranberry color that worked incredibly well. We had her return address letterpressed using a matte gold for a little added luxe. We also lined both the main and return envelope with a soft gold liner. Lastly, Lauren sourced some of the cutest vintage stamps I’ve seen tying this entire piece together with a bit of charm.
{looking forward to sharing Lauren + Jay’s day of pictures soon, taken by the super talented Trent Bailey Photography}
February 21, 2013
Friend of Swiss Cottage and official SCD photographer, Susan Pittard, came by the office last week to see what was cooking. We loaded her up with some of our new SCD goodies and she pulled together a few pics for us. One of my favorite parts about this business is getting to play with our packaging and branding. Just last month we rolled out our new site and since then we’ve been adding a few other freshies to the mix. The big ones were our new business cards + client thank you notes. I ended up screen printing these {white ink on kraft paper} after I fell in love with a recent client job that was also screen printed. Our new business cards are letterpress on one side and screen printed on the other side {and then duplexed to be #220 lbs.}. Patterns have always been a weakness for me so I created two new envelope liner patterns to play with. I found a great company online and created some cute custom ribbon as well. Of course, like any tortured artist, as soon as it was all complete I enjoyed it for about 5 minutes before I jumped to thinking about what I’ll change next time… the joys of being a creative!
