This wedding announcement card had a few purposes beyond inviting people to events. Notably to share our story and personality to groups of friends and family who didn’t know one another and didn’t know the other half of “us”.

Rather than a “regular” template designed scripty card or modern-ish version with a candid-esue photo and quirky yet rote design, we made something ourselves by hand, analog style. 

All traditional “rules” of design were broken except the ones about “telling a story” and “reflecting personality and culture”. Noting we mixed Japanese, English, images and art in creative ways to tell the story, rather direct duplicate translations. 

The result was 4 panel of truly mixed-media, each panel telling a different part of the story, in a unique way and laden with motifs of various kinds. Pieces used included: letraset run-off lettering (from 1970s), flowers/plants, all sorts of paper collage, watercolour pencils, shodu ink, stamps (postal and inky), stickers, doodles, ephemera and all the rest.

There were 2 iterations due to the use of fresh flowers in the design (which was scanned then printed) which crushed and wilted.

Continue reading Announcement storybook / Dave + Ryoko 4-20 Kekkon-shiki →