University of Kent
HND Graphic Design
Final Major Project
Background Information
Having got recently engaged, Sophie and Mark are now thinking about their big day, and over the next couple of weeks they had drafted a list of whom they’ll invite, booked the wedding venue, and now they’re ready to take the next step.
They have decided to have a fairytale themed wedding and need to have some invitations designed for them so reflect this theme. Each of the counterparts of the invitation has to have that consistent theme, and they are willing to spend as much as possible to have their perfect wedding.
The Brief
I intend to design a wedding invitation, possibly including the R.S.V.P, dinner choices or directions card, which shall all be reflecting the fairytale theme.
Research and Methodology
For this I am going to look at already existing designs to see how the information is displayed on the stationary set, including designs from Behance.net and major wedding companies. This could also include looking at wedding magazines to see what kind of packages they have to offer.
Here are some of the books, websites and magazines I intend to have a look at:
Wedding Magazine - http://www.weddingandweddingflowers.co.uk/
Brides Magazine - http://www.bridesmagazine.co.uk/
You and Your Wedding - http://www.youandyourwedding.co.uk/
B&G - http://www.brideandgroomdirect.co.uk/
Paperchain Wedding Stationary http://www.paperchainweddingstationery.co.uk/
“Stationary Design Now!” by Ed. Julius Wiedemann
“Making and Breaking The Grid” by Timothy Samara
By researching into wedding companies and magazines would help me figure out what information needs to be displayed on the invites so that I could avoid missing out important information. Wedding invitations might have a set of guidelines and if they do I would need to find out what order to put everything in.
I could also look further into the wording of the information because I know that some are done quite formally and so I don’t want mine to be too informal. I had already have a quick look at some designs and I realised that the name of the host often changes between the parents and the couple themselves, and I need to figure out why this is the case. Little details like this are important to the design.
I have also listed how-to design books, and this is to help me look further into the layout of the invitation so that the type displayed would be set out in a way that they could be easily understood by people of all ages.
I could also talk to couples that had already been married to see how they had presented their invites and how they were packaged, and what their expectations would be for an invite design. At the same time I could look at existing designs from stationary companies and design blogs to gather inspiration.
Reflection, Learning & Testing Outcomes
Unlike other projects, there are two sets of learning outcomes that I need to keep to; the FMP and Methodology module. To ensure that I have followed both of them I am going to analyse each outcome and write ways of how I will meet them. For example, one of the learning outcomes is “Developed their awareness of the needs and requirements of professional practice, manifested in the ability to produce practical work of good technical quality.” I could do this by writing or drawing up a mind map of ideas that would meet my client’s needs of having a fairytale themed wedding and do all of the research and designing in relation to that.
Because of the amount of outcomes I need to keep to I am going to ensure that I conclude each section of research/design to explain why they are relevant to the project and possibly mention something that shows that I have met a learning outcome. By concluding each section (as I mentioned in my learning outcomes) would help not only to achieve the learning outcomes but would also help me to test the effectiveness of my work as I am doing it. Is it sticking to the fairytale wedding theme? Does it display all of the information correctly? To do this I could write little notes next to my sketches during that stage so that I could continuously develop an idea.
What I could also do is do some research beforehand on existing designs and analyse them to discover the semiotics behind the design and perhaps the reason they did it e.g. why they used a particular colour.
Experimentation
The “testing” I mentioned beforehand links in to my experimentation, as I would like to try out different styles (typographic and, perhaps, illustrative) so that I could expand my knowledge in design. Wedding invitations are a bit of a challenge for me, as I haven’t designed one before so even doing this project would help me know a little more about a different design sector.
Professional Practice
I am going to treat this project as if it’s going to be displayed in my portfolio when attending an interview, which means that I would heavily rely on my research to back up my work so that I could produce a near-perfect design. I therefore need to take printing as well as paper choice into consideration.
Production Schedule & Contingency Planning
Here’s my production schedule so that I wouldn’t rush all of my research, sketching and designing right at the end:
I shall loosely work around this, as I know that I might come across some complications on the way (e.g. artists block, lack of found information). Therefore I shall say that I would like to at least come up with a final sketch of my design 2 – 3 weeks before the deadline. If it does go smoothly and I finish my wedding invitation way before then I shall attempt to design and finish all of the other elements found in a wedding package.
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