"[The guide] doubled as the invite, which worked out perfectly collaborating with Scout Books and Raaka Chocolates as the printers." - Charmaine Choi
Charmaine Choi wanted to create a keepsake for guests coming to her fall 2015 wedding in New York City. Most of the guests were from out of town, so the couple decided to create a mini-guide to New York through their own eyes. It doubled as an invitation plus a handy resource to help guests plan their trip to the Big Apple.
The 32-page guide was offset printed on various recycled papers using only one color. Additional pieces of the wedding suite, including the RSVP card, an invitation to a “recovery brunch” and the rehearsal dinner invite, were rubber stamped.
Charmaine enlisted the help of Annie Lim to create floral illustrations featured throughout the guide and on the wrapper of the custom-designed Raaka Chocolate bars they distributed to guests. She also created custom-made stamps that use the floral design.
The designer says that although being your own client can be difficult, she knew they wanted to create something personal. Luckily, production ran smoothly for the 250 copies.
“When we decided to create a custom book and designed chocolates, the production was straight forward as the printers already had templates ready,” she explains. “The only production challenge is lining up your different vendors to make sure the production times work together in the end.”
Sabine Lenz is the founder of PaperSpecs.com, the first online paper database and community specifically designed for paper specifiers.
Growing up in Germany, Sabine started her design career in Frankfurt, before moving to Australia and then the United States. She has worked on design projects ranging from corporate identities to major road shows and product launches. From start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, her list of clients included Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Deutsche Bank, IBM and KPMG.
Seeing designers struggle worldwide to stay current with new papers and paper trends inspired Sabine to create PaperSpecs, an independent and comprehensive Web-based paper database and weekly e-newsletter. She is also a speaker on paper issues and the paper industry. Some refer to her lovingly as the "paper queen" who combines her passion for this wonderful substrate called paper with a hands-on approach to sharing her knowledge.