Pressing Decisions: CMYK

When deciding on colors for our invitation suite, I initially had a bit of a problem. You see, I wanted a few things…

1. Both of “our colors” Somehow, during this whole wedding planning thing, two colors emerged– a process cyan and magenta. This is very visible in our engagement shoot, as JP rocked socks in his color, the process cyan, and I went nuts in hot pink tights. Therefore, in our invites, I wanted to throw both of those colors in.
2. Each piece in a different color Since we only have 1-color invites, I wanted to be able to get as much color bang for my buck, so to speak. We’re having a color-fabulous wedding, so the invites should be that way as well.
3. The whole thing not to look like a big bunch of crayons One thing that I quickly found while messing around with color was that it would be easy to let our more-formal-but-still-funky-invites to go too much in the casual direction. I needed to find a way to have our colors and… eat them too? And to be able to keep things sleek.
4. I wanted a reason Perhaps this is something that was just beat into me in art-land, or something that was instilled in me long ago by my father, but I don’t like to do things “just cuz.” I always feel the need to be able to back up my decisions and choices, no matter how random they may seem. I view most of the the things, decisions, what-have-you as a part of a giant critique. I already had a reason for the pink and blue in our invites, but what would the backing for other colors? I wanted something stronger than, “Oh, ’cause it’s pretty.”

Of course, I obsessed over this while designing everything. I obsess, a lot, if you haven’t noticed. I thought I’d never be able to make a decision.

THEN! Then. Then. THEN, on the way home from the gym, I had a brilliant idea.

I bolted into the house, quickly sketched it all out like a maniac, and cell-phone-picture sent it to my idea-bouncing peeps. (I am crazy ADHD, so ideas fall out of my head in about 2 seconds).

1. CMYK? Our colors + traditional printmaking colors all in one. Winnnnnnsky.
2. Cyan for JP Reception card and response card envelope.
3. Magenta for moi Wedding invitation and return address on outer envelope.
4. Yellow for accents Inner envelope liner and invitation band. We have billy buttons and various other yellow things. I thought that yellow would be best as a non-printed color, because it can be hard to read.
5. Black for the dressy factor Response card, calligraphy on the outer envelope, and calligraphy on the inner envelope. Having the black as an anchor, in my opinion, helps to keep the level of formality up. It keeps it from becoming a crayon-circus-fest, and, of course, is the K in the CYMK thang.

Here it is in Ai-action. Pretend that the script is my handwriting, and also pretend that there’s a yellow band in there.

So there you have it, the colors of our invites. It’s almost time to be able to play with these guys IRL. Color me excited.

How did you decide on the colors of your invitations? Did you have an easy time choosing, or a hard time narrowing down which colors you would use?