FMP: Save the Date design

The final design

The process

To start my design I created a new document in InDesign and put in the dimensions of an A6 card (using that little booklet on invitation designs to help me figure out how large I wanted it to be). I made it so that it was portrait rather than landscape so that it would look like a mini version of the invitation.

Now it's ready to design!

Design One
I'm still a bit unsure of what Save the Date design to go for, so my first thought was to do one exactly like my invitation. I began by Placing my illustration onto the design but let it bleed to the edge, and then drew a white rectangle within my little "box" where my text would go.

Once the general layout was then I then began to put in the type (having already written it down during my sketching stage). This is entirely experimental but in the end I found myself copying & pasting what I did on the invitation but then adjusting it to fit onto the Save the Date card.
I pushed my illustration to the side and brought up the baseline grid just so that I could get all of the type aligned correctly.

This was my result after fixing all of the type and the colours:

Design Two

I created a new page for my second design idea, and pasted in my illustration. I then reduced the size of it so that it would fit nicely in one of the columns. After that I began filling in the type!

At this point I realised that it was probably not going to turn out quite as I expected: I didn't like the layout of the type, there was too big a gap of the type from the edges, and it had an overall cramped appearance. I thus abandoned this idea.

Design Three
My next idea was to make the illustration even smaller and position it at the top centre of the page, so that's what I did! I then played around with the type.

I quite liked this idea but I needed to play around with the layout of type a bit more as the page has an overall very "plain" appearance. This might be because of the large white space surrounding the design, so maybe even A6 was too large?

Testing Type
It was at this point I realised that I needed to concentrate more on the layout of the type rather than looking at ways on how to display the castle, so I carried out several experiments to see what would work well for the Save the Date card.

Design Four to Eight
I decided that I really liked the second and last layout design, so I went along and played around with fitting in the illustration.

For the last layout design I went and changed it to a landscape orientation. I then placed in all of the elements, and once done I decided to do another version so that I could use the same technique as I did for the wedding invitation. Then I played around with type once more.

So I have these designs:

I'm leaning towards the top left and the top centre design, although out of these I'm not quite sure which one to pick out of these so I shall place them beside my invitation design to see which one works best.

Comparing Designs

Design Four:

Strong points:

• Shows what the card is straight away - the Save the Date is in a large pt size as well as a decorative typeface
• Similar to invitation - shows that it's part of a set, but it's just a miniature version of it
• Slightly different to invitation - illustration bleeds off the page
• Same center alignment 

Weak points:

• Heading type for Save the Date - is it too large?
• Other type looks very small in comparison
• Need to fix the alignment 

Design Five:

Strong points:

• Different to invitation but has similar aspects such as the illustration and the way that "Sophie and Mark" is in Lavanderia, which is similar to the way the invitation is designed
• Orientation - different - more interesting?
• Minimalist design

Weak points:

• Doesn't really highlight that it's a Save the Date card - could possibly set it on two different lines with "Save the Date" in bold (similar to design seven)
• Type size needs to be larger as it'll be hard to read when printed out 

I still can't decide even by writing all of these points, because they both have strong designs. I think that in order to figure out which one to choose properly I would need to print them out and place them side by side.

Another thing I could do is also ask for my classmate's opinion on my designs, but first I must make the changes that I have mentioned above.

Conclusion:
After gathering some feedback I have decided to go with the top design, where I have chosen a portrait orientation.
My reasons being that it is obvious that it's a Save the Date card as the type is larger and more decorative, therefore placing more of an emphasis on it.  It is easier to take a glance at it and immediately know what it's about so when the recipient puts it up on their wall they could easily just walk past and take a quite look and immediately be reminded of the special event.
Another reason is that the card works well on it's own as it is decorative enough to be the pre-invite, but not so much that it makes the invitation just seem the same ol' design.

The roses on the landscape proved distracting due to the fact that they appeared larger, and so viewers couldn't really concentrate on the words as much. The type only highlighted the names of the couple and so the recipient could get confused when they are shuffling through their pile of papers, whereas the other design immediately stands out and explains what it's about.

Now that I have decided which one to go for I could now concentrate on designing the RSVP card!