Last weekend, I picked up the cards that I designed for Doris and Dawood. Gave the customers their cards today! :)
Doris & her cards! :)
A close-up of Doris’ card
…and Dawood’s pizza delivery :)
A close-up of the design for Dawood’s pizza delivery card
A few days after I posted on how I want to lose weight with Wii, Doris came up to me during lunch and offered me something that was totally unexpected and I will remember for a long, long time.
She offered me her TV and DVD player, free (you read that right!) in exchange of designing her personal card.
OF COURSE I SAID YES (though I had to ask her several times ‘are you sure? are you sure? are you sure?’…sorry, Doris I’m pretty sure that was annoying!).
I work on her designs as soon as I received Doris’ answers in response to my questions – what is the purpose, color scheme, information, etc etc etc.
The concept behind her personal card was pretty interesting, and she referred me to this site so I get a better idea. Knowing what Doris wanted the personal card for – as a contact card, a gift tag, something to scribble notes, etc, really helped me visualize (like, there should be ample white space for her to write on!)
I came up with four designs
(purple rectangular shape covers email address for privacy purpose on this blog):
Before I go further, let me just share the choice of font for her name. I initially used Century Gothic, simply to enhance the circular perimeters of the D, O, S, C and U. However visually, CG doesn’t work. I knew that the font for her name has to be sans-serif and where the x-height across all letters must be of same height.
Then it hit: DKNY. I had to look for a font similar like DKNY.
The font that I used is called PetitaBold. You can download it at DaFont.com, my number #1 source for fonts.
Anyway, back to the designs, Doris loves #4! With a few tweaks (taking out the gold outerglow, adding in “C” into her monogram), the final design was done!
I also prepared a soft copy of A4 format upon her request.
By the way, if you’re curious about the opacity grey ‘clipart’ at the background, it is actually a font (no kidding!). In DaFont.com, there is a category called Dingbats. It means that for each letter you press, a dingbat/icon/picture will come out instead of the usual font interpretation. There are 21 sub categories under Dingbats (from Aliens to Shapes to Nature), so experiment, experiment!
I also offered to print out her personal cards professionally done in Bangkok for free, so I’m really looking forward to see a hard copy of this design. :)
It’s really been a blessing to have this opportunity to do something I love and in return, get something that I really need. I’ve decided that this TV will serve a greater purpose – not only will I be able to exercise, but I’ll also try my best to document my exercise progress with Wii here in my blog, so that others may benefit (who knows!) :).
Cheers up to a great 2010!
The Warjris
When Freda approached me sometime middle of last year to design her wedding invitation cards, I was ecstatic! Not only I get to design my first wedding invitation appointment, but I also get to design it for my good friend! How cool is that :)
On the design, Freda already knew what she wanted: ’simple’ and ‘elegant’. She was still deciding between blue and/or green for the card then, so I saved lots of pictures that had awesome blue and green shades to ‘pick’ colors later.
The green & blue shade that I used for Freda’s cards
Since she didn’t have any preference on the size of the card, I suggested an A5 size (half of an A4 paper), where we can open vertically (top-bottom). No doubt it would have been awesome to have a custom size, but nonetheless the main reason behind the A5 size is convenience.
Since she planned on printing her own cards, Freda can print two wedding cards (back-to-back) on 1 A4 paper, simply by changing the feature in the printing options ‘2 pages per sheet’.With a paper cutter, she can conveniently slide the paper right to the middle, slice it and on to the next one (though in reality, she cut her cards using a pen knife! Whaaaaaaaaatt).
(side track: if you send a design to an established printing press, you are charged more for having a custom-sized paper. But not if you’re using standard size, like A4, A5, A3, etc.)
The wedding invitation card
When Freda mentioned elegance, I knew that the font will play a huge role in exuding this element. When both of the couple’s names were capitalized, by using the right font (in this case, GeoSansLight), the lean-ness of the letters were fully taken advantaged (in a positive way) to the max!
She also mentioned on having ‘freda heart vaughn’ at the front cover. So instead of having GeoSansLight (I did try…but it looks weird with the love-shape, tsk), I used the beloved Century Gothic to emphasize the circular perimeter of the letters. It worked well and it totally matched with the love-shape, smacked right in the middle! Gives a little ‘awwww’ feeling, don’t you think?
The type of paper is the shiny-kind, so that made the card looked even more elegant. Oh hey, Freda designed her own RSVP cards, how cool is that! :)
When it came to the wedding program, Freda had something in mind which involved 3 layers of papers (one on top of the other); cover, wedding program and thanks.
Click to see a bigger version
and it became like this…
Taken by Nathan Loo Photography
I also had an opportunity to make the couple’s video, shown during the Reception. It was my first time doing a video for a wedding reception (and probably my last, hahahaha…I’m not cut out for videos!).
I’m glad that I was able to help in the graphic design area for Freda and Vaughn’s wedding. The fact that I get to do something that I love for people that I adore is just pure blessing! :)
Hope this will not be my last wedding design :)