Whenever I work on a branding project, it’s important to really take the time to truly understand the personality and message the client trying to portray. In Janice’s case she wanted to capture her love of all things French while still playing off her whimsical, romantic aesthetic. I created a few different looks that I felt each expressed Janice’s business and let her choose what option worked best for her. The first logo set draws upon a French decorative style with swirling flourishes and vintage French inspired type.

I love the second set of logos! It was inspired by vintage baroque forms and then I peppered the design with sketches of the photographic equipment Janice uses on a daily basis. I love the clever aspect of this as it merges her love of French design with photography.

The final set of logos was Janice’s choice. We took inspiration from The Little Prince, with the stars and free flowing shapes. I also love how the circular shape here speaks to the shape of a camera lens.

pictures via Gothamist

When working on Jamie’s branding, it was pretty easy. She has a very clean and simple aesthetic and wanted everything on the logo to serve a purpose. I was gearing up for a long branding meeting but Jamie walked in and pick something from the first round and that was that. As the business continues to grow, I’ll share more pictures of the evolution of the Poppy’s branding. But here is your first taste of Swiss Cottage Designs new bestie: Poppy’s Catering + Events!

The Poppy’s Logo:

Logo Variations:

Poppy’s Website {complete with a pic of Poppy himself, Jamie’s grandfather and inspiration for her business}:

The owner, Jamie, and her number one gal, Rachel:

A few pics in and around Poppy’s:

follow Poppy’s on instagram @poppyscatering

Our invites were quite possibly the hardest thing I had to do for my wedding. Given the fact that I design wedding invitations for a living, there was a bit of “gentle ribbing” from friends and family about their expectations. And frankly, designing for yourself is very hard! We didn’t really have a theme going into our wedding but one thing that kept coming up was music and the colors black and white. Our save the date was based on the Rob Base song “It Takes Two” so we weren’t afraid to get a little weird. For the actual wedding, I used a line from a Biggie song that ended up being a repeating theme throughout our invites and day of pieces.

I knew I wanted the invite to be focused around a hand drawn illustration since that is what I love to do. We got married in the DUBMO neighborhood of Brooklyn which has some pretty awesome views. There is one iconic street that showcases the Manhattan Bridge with the Empire State Building nestled below; I chose that as our main image to draw. The invitation was printed in two parts then duplexed to #220 and printed on Crane Lettra. One of the important things for me was to have the invite sound like how we both actually speak. We have a very dry sense of humor and we really wanted that to come out in our copy.

For the RSVP card, I created a mini-letterpress record complete with glassine sleeve. I paired this up with a petite black, square envelope and had our return address letterpressed in matte silver on the front. The record was little, roughly 4″ x 4″ so it was easy enough for our guests to ship back to us.

My personal favorite detail was the envelope liner! My friend is a photographer and when looking through her pictures, I saw one of a guy with knuckle tattoos. As soon as I saw that, I knew I wanted to incorporate that same idea into our suite somehow. One I realized that “BROOKLYN” fit on the knuckles, it was a done deal! I really had my heart set on black envelopes so I knew addressing them would be an issue. In came the ridiculously talented Jenna of Love, Jenna calligraphy. She created the perfect look for our suite complete with little details to match back to our design.

We did not do a wedding website but instead provided our guests with an insert chalk full of how to spend a perfect winter weekend in NYC + Brooklyn. This was printed flat on kraft paper.

I finished the suite off with a black + gold twine {from the awesome Knot + Bow} and had a die cut tag created to hold everything together. I love little silhouettes and create one of our hair to use throughout our suite as a continual theme. Overall, we wanted our invites to feel classic, set the tone for our wedding but most importantly to make our friends and family laugh.

The last few bits are from some of our day of elements that we snuck into this shoot. I hope you like everything!

I have been wanting to share Lauren and Jay’s wedding invitations since they were still in the proof form! Lauren and Jay {stars of our comic book save the date} had a blow out bash at Brooklyn’s The Green Building back in October. When I say this bride left no stone unturned, I mean it. She dotted every I and crossed every T when it came to this wedding which made designing her suite incredibly easy. Lauren kept it pretty simple in terms of the overall look but killed it with the details. She knew right away that she wanted to have them letterpress printed. I drew a brick pattern that played off the look of The Green Building and had that blind impressed over the entire invite. Next up, we kept the typefaces very clean and simple. At first glance, it might come off as a very minimal invite but the more you dive in, the more the piece comes together. Lauren was using a “vampy” Cranberry for a punch of color so we had the edges painted with that detail in mind. Next up- the envelopes! Lauren had her heart set on using the very talented Love, Jenna for her envelopes and I have to say, she could not have done a better job! Jenna even added her touch on the invite by adding the “and” to the main piece. Jenna was inspired by Lauren’s vampy punch color and calligraphed her envelopes with a deep Cranberry color that worked incredibly well. We had her return address letterpressed using a matte gold for a little added luxe. We also lined both the main and return envelope with a soft gold liner. Lastly, Lauren sourced some of the cutest vintage stamps I’ve seen tying this entire piece together with a bit of charm.

{looking forward to sharing Lauren + Jay’s day of pictures soon, taken by the super talented Trent Bailey Photography}