Since preparing for my wedding, I initially spent hours searching and designing wedding stationery. I wanted to design my own range that represented romance and my appreciation of contemporary design. At present, I have designed the ‘Save the Date’ invite and have been developing ideas for the wedding invitations, menu and rsvp cards, as well as the seating plan. I just love graphic design and I have displayed what is around at the moment, selecting designs with different styles of fonts.

In my opinion, I would say that the styling and theme of stationery that people choose, reflects their personalities and how you want to come across – preferring whether you like french sophistication, fun loving or perhaps a romantic theme. The use of typography can help to support this also. The styles I like the most are script, san serif and handwritten fonts for wedding stationery, especially if it is done in a contemporary way and I am always on the look out for something different. In particular, I look for strong colour palettes and compositions, nice imagery as well as interesting typography!

There are many designers and companies providing wedding stationery, however I will only mention 3 websites where I have shown a range of lovely designs, that display a variety of font styles and themes.

Wedding stationery from www.notonthehighstreet.com:

This range is in keeping with the fairground theme, that I was looking at on May Day. It is Carnival Wedding Invitations by Project Pretty and they have used a soft palette of pale blue and grey, on a crisp white background.

More designs from Not On The High Street

Gypsy Wedding Stationery by A Bird & A Bee. This invitation has a delicate handrawn font, accompanied by pretty floral top and bottom detail.

Chevron Personalised Wedding Stationery by Little Cherub Design. This design is very vibrant and bold. I love the horizontal repetitive chevron pattern – simple, yet effective!

Wedding stationery from www.behance.net

By Erik Oelke. This range uses typography and a few graphical elements (hearts, circle shapes, boxes etc…). The main colour scheme is black and white, which is broken up by the pink envelopes.

By Jolly Edition. The hand drawn floral illustration is lovely and the designer has used a variety of fonts. I am particularly drawn to the pale blue background colour and the illustration, then the names of the yet to be ‘bride and groom’ and finally, the ceremony date. The overall look, looks fresh and pretty, but not “fluffy”.

By Alisa Bobzien. This is another favourite of mine. There is a lot going on, yet it works! I love the pink invitation with the decorative white border. It is not over fussy and the decorative element is used again on the rest of the stationery, yet in black. Pink is used again within the flower. Beautiful!

Wedding stationery from www.minted.com

Fiesta Folk Art by root beer float. This design is very pretty. The turquoise background colour is deep enough to enable us to see the white text and pattern clearly. Also, the text is centre aligned, fitting snuggly within the mirrored patterened frame.

BISTRO by chocomocacino. This design is pretty minimal,using only fine black type and linear graphic elements. Yellow is slightly used to highlight the ceremony date and informing people that a wedding invitation is to follow.

After Sunset by Kristen Smith. This design reminds me of old films i.e. the text sections inbetween moving slide scenes. I love the Victorian details, such as the swirly lines around the top ‘C’, the graphic line seperating the names and ceremony information, and the chosen fonts. There is some texture to break up the black background. Again like most of the above stationery designs, the text is centre aligned. Possibly this is either what alignment style I like or it is a trend that is popular at the moment?!

Every year in Knutsford Cheshire, there’s a costume parade and a fairground. To the people who live there and in the surrounding areas, it’s an annual event with huge significance. This is mainly because every year, besides a May Queen being selected to mark this event, people from Knutsford catch up with friends who have moved away or have ‘come out of the woodwork’; sometimes only seen during Christmas, Easter, other bank holidays and May Day.

The fairground is assembled on Knutsford Heath, which is transformed from an empty green field where children play and dogs are walked, to a construction made from spraypaint, steel and plywood, thousands of lightbulbs, rivets, nuts and bolts!

There’s something fascinating and exciting about fairgrounds, with their flashing lights, rides and straplines, loud music, mashup of sound, the smell of diesel and fast-food, and tacky imagery. All sorts of people come, from all walks of life and add to the colour and variation of the whole scene.

This year, I took a particular interest in the typography. It’s everywhere, ever present in the the names of the rides, pricing boards and safety notices, trying to entice customers to part with their pennies.

I love the atmosphere at fairgrounds, created by the sights, sounds and smells, so I grabbed my camera and captured a small part of it.

When browsing on the computer, I came across a few pieces that look like they were inspired by traditional fairground typography. This style is very popular at the moment and has been for some time now, in particular I have noticed it more on greeting and wedding stationery.

The wedding stationery was seen on personallyinvited.com I like how the black type is clearly seen on the white background and how it contrasts with the yellow stripes.

I love how the type and decorative graphic elements are positioned together. The type is centre aligned and there are contemporary distressed stars and dotted black fonts combined with more detailed type, including a pointing hand, plus both top and bottom swirly decorations. This piece was seen on notonthehighstreet.com

This piece is so simple yet lovely! The type is centrally placed within the sign in red and besides the typography contrasting against the white background, the surrounding lights around the edge will draw you in, focussing on what it is advertising. This sign was seen on graphiquefantastique.com

This image doesn’t display any typography, but I loved it anyway! The distressed textured background and the pink foreground foliage are lovely. There is lots of space surrounding the main focus – the merry-go-round and the young girl, who is engrossed in what looks like what she is eating?! A lot of old fairground signage is cracked and worn and this image demonstrates this. Could this mean that ‘old’ represents an element of ‘nostalgia’? This image was seen on cube-gallery.co.uk