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Interview with Angela Liguori, an Italian graphic designer in Boston who specializes in custom made invitations

Posted in Invitations, Starting to plan your wedding, tagged Angela Liguori, Boston, graphic designer, Italian, wedding invitations, weddings on December 20, 2008| 1 Comment »

by Angela Liguri Thank you to Angela Liguori for taking some time during the busy holiday season to share her expertise and advice about wedding invitations. Don’t miss her website with more gorgeous images. Find out what she’s been up to recently on her blog.

The language on an invitation can be a tricky thing. Do you have suggestions about how to choose the right words?

For the wording I always refer to an excellent book by Julie Holcomb entitled Wedding Invitations Handbook . So much meaning can be read between the lines! I strongly recommend this book, before even starting to design the invitations. It is beautifully written, with a lot of details.

What percentage of a wedding budget does a couple usually spend on invitations?

The wedding invitation is the first impression of the event your guests will receive by opening the envelope. From every detail it reflects the style of the wedding, if it is modern or traditional, formal or more casual. So much it can be seen from the use of paper, typefaces and wording. Couples who decide to have a personal designer for their wedding invitation are giving much importance to this first impression. Anyway, it is still a marginal cost compare to the wedding gown, the reception or the honeymoon.

What can couples do to make your design work easier for you? How much input do you expect from them?

I usually show the couple my portfolio of samples during the first meeting. It is very helpful when they can give me an idea of what they like or they have a sense of style that will reflect their wedding. Sometimes they have a theme color already, or the location and time of the wedding can give the first input to the wedding invitations. For example, if it is a fall wedding, we try to keep in mind some deep fall colors for the paper, maybe an ornament to be included in the design or the color of printing for the text. Every detail can contribute to design.

What makes your service unique?

I work closely with the couple, and I like to design something unique for each of them, that reflects their sense of style, the flavor of the event, but that remains personal.

Do couples usually order save the dates, thank you cards, invitations all from the same source? What is the advantage of doing that?

Sometimes couples do order all the pieces of the wedding invitations from the same designer, sometimes they like to make or chose something on their own. I think it is important to work on the same style from the beginning to the end, but I understand when the couple is also trying to save some of the costs and buy thank you notes or save the dates from other sources.

This blog is primarily for the “unbride.” What invitation advice would you offer her?

Try to enjoy the event fully, without too many worries. It is your day and you will remember it forever!

How have Italian paper and traditions influenced your work?

I think I developed my sense of aesthetic, colors, and design mainly from growing up in Italy. It is something that became part of me early on in my work. I also always like to include Italian paper or other materials in my designs. Personally, I believe it adds quality to the final piece.

by Angela Liguri

For more information:

Carta, Inc., originally from Rome, Italy, now located in Boston, is a graphic design studio specializing in custom made stationery, invitations, business cards and hand-bound books. The most recent addition to their products is a line of cotton ribbons directly imported from Rome.

Owner Angela Liguori also collaborates with graphic designer Silvana Amato on some limited edition books, under the imprint of Edizioni Almenodue, which translates as “Press of at Least two.” Since 1998, they’ve collaborated with several illustrators, calligraphers, papermakers, type designers and translators for their editions.

Books and calendars by Edizioni Almenodue can be found in several Special Collection Libraries throughout the United States and Europe.

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www.angelaliguori.com

http://angelaliguori.blogspot.com/

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Guest Blog: Elisabeth von Uhl shares invitation expertise

Posted in Guest Blogs, Invitations, tagged Elisabeth von Uhl, Guest, Invitations, letterpress, Ocean Sea, search, thermograph, weddings on December 16, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Poet Elisabeth von Uhl, author of Ocean Sea, shares her search for a beautiful wedding invitation. Thanks, Elisabeth!

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Like the relationship, the wedding is also a practice in compromise. Luckily for me, my husband-to-be was pretty supportive of the decisions I made regarding the wedding. He had bought into the idea that girls plan their weddings from infancy. Of course, I was highly offended by this idea (as if I did not have better things to think of as a youth?!?!), but then realized it gave me license to make many of the decisions.

One of the decisions was the announcement of the wedding: the invite and the save-the-date card. Of course, I, like Chloe, obsess over the written word so any announcement regarding the rest of my life in words had to be perfect. Sadly, though, people like Emily Post and social expectations have already decided the words for you; You only have a say in the aesthetics of the announcement.

Sadly, I do not really remember any of the invites from the previous weddings I had attended. Most of them were kits bought at Target or Staples and printed out on home computers. Others were invites bought from printers that looked exactly like those printed at home. So I spent time at Target and at Staples looking at their off-white invites with their smashed white bows. Likewise, the save-the-date cards were generic and simply blah. Other save-the-date options were magnets or calendars, both of which were not priority in which to spend money. So I decided to download an old vintage template for a Chicago (the location of our wedding) postcard. Then I went online and had them printed from vistaprint.com.

http://www.legendsofamerica.com/photos-illinois/GreetingsChicago.jpg

Viola! Money still left in the pocket.

From this experience, I was even more motivated that a deal was to be had in the invitation department. I consulted the do-it-yourself Diva, the Martha Stewart. I love her Weddings magazine and found many, many DIY ideas to trim my budget. But I also found lovely, lovely invitations in which to salivate over. Almost all those beautiful invites featured in the Weddings magazines (yet I had yet to see such beautiful invites in person) were letterpressed, a process involving raised, metal type. Because of this, letterpress demands high-quality paper for this process. The process also demands an artist to set the press and design the blocks used for printing, hence letterpress is a bit pricey and, not necessarily accessible or sold in any old store. But I was hooked; even more convincing, my mother who was married in the Seventies had a simple, white 3 by 5 inch, cotton-paper invite with simple, block raised words announcing her marriage to my father. You could run your hand over it and feel the words. It was quite delightful and “regal”. So even though, most thought me crazy to invest in invites, because “people throw them away”, I still wanted a beautiful record of the wedding. I also wanted a work of art, not some generic piece of paper in which my public commitment to my husband was announced. So after scouring the internet, I settled on beautiful thermograph (a modern-day alterative in which the type is raised by heat and then the ink is dusted on) invites.