CHIPS N FOZZY

Sudtipos - the creator of to-die-for scripts and very sexy yet simple prints.  I absolutely love going through their site.  Drool at fonts.  Download the closest freebies searchable on the web or get "pirated" ones.  You know, those versions where serifs are a wee bit fatter, or flourishes are a wee bit shorter (or not there at all).  Sometimes I actually think if 60 USD is worth it.  But then again, I'm not getting any income for all the design playing.  I'm just getting a brain-high.

Here's Compendium, a delicate and gorgeous script created by Alejandro Paul.  It's part of the Favorite Fonts of 2008 list.  It's like staring at a pair of designer shoes.  For me, at least.

let⋅ter⋅press/ˈlɛtərˌprɛs/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [let-er-pres] –noun 1. the process of printing from letters or type in relief, rather than from intaglio plates or planographically.

Following this obsession with typography, surfing through wLT (We Love Typography) brought me back to browsing paperie.  Specifically, letterpress invitations.  I don't know how I could've overlooked it while we were preparing for our wedding.  Maybe my mind automatically closed its doors to it, knowing how expensive it would be (both in terms of time and money).

Anyways, just wanted to share the brilliant letterpress work of Dolce Press.  They range from the minimalist to the ornate.  But even the simplest typeface is touched with a level of class and elegance.  There's something about the detail and the effort that goes into the paper - I don't think it can be compared with any intricate digital design.  It's possibly the same way I feel about film.  Hehe.

Almost done with the invitations!  Here's a teaser.  This would be the opening page for the invite set (click for bigger view).  It still carries the non-monogram, the antique paper and the type-written text.  If the image can't be viewed or is still blurred, below is the text inscribed:

I love you without knowing how,
     or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly,    
without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
    so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
    so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

The excerpt is from one of our favorite sonnets from Pablo Neruda, and it was read in a lovely but sad scene by Robin Williams in his movie Patch Adams (*tear*).  I've been writing poetry for a while, and Chips was actually the one who introduced me to Neruda and his works.  He gave me a copy of Il Postino, and I actually cried listening to it as I was driving home. 

For the other pages, just need to finalize the list for the entourage.  And for the actual invite page, run the text through our parents.  I hope they don't have any builds.  I'm kinda already so attached to the design (can't help it, it's my work of art!  hehe).  Anyways, hope you guys like this :)

Mwah!

Another Photoshop project.  I'm ripping the "library card" idea off from another wedding that I found through oncewed.com and just made some little tweaks so it could talk about the theme.  When I saw the idea, I felt like I could totally relate to it - I love the smell of old books, the library, reading.  Chips probably not as much, but he was generally okay with the idea.  Yay to me!  We'll probably just print these ourselves, since we're not making too many.  The index card of rules also came from the same inspiration source, and I thought it was a perfect and light-hearted way to set some reminders without coming off too dictatorial.

In keeping with the vintage theme, the tonality is of aged and antique paper combined with an old-typewriter kind of font.  I was initially planning to just buy library cards and manually stamp and type on it, but since that was too much of a hassle to scour for the raw materials, I chose to just compose and recreate everything on Photoshop.  I was too excited to wait.

Fonts are from abstractfonts.com.

Just work in progress.  This is me playing around with Photoshop using online tutorials.  I'm having an art director from the agency have a crack at it as well, and I can't wait to see what he's come up with.

I saw all the other couples having their initials and I thought that I wanted ours to be different.  There's more to us than the first letters of our names.  So why not have something that would tell our guests more about us?  The two cameras featured are the prized ones from our collection of film cams (yes, we still love shooting with film).  Ironically, the taller one (Yashica D) is mine and the smaller one is Chips' (hehe).  He shot this in his small studio and I rendered it using some filters in Photoshop.  I think we make a great team!

This non-monogram will be the consistent element (aside from the aged-paper look) throughout the paperie for the wedding.  From the invitation to the thank you cards and the gift labels.  I'm so excited for these, among so many other things!