Design a Creative Wedding Invitation

WHAT WE’RE CREATING:

Greetings Design Cutters!

Pam here with a tutorial using the incredible fonts from this week’s bundle. One of the most requested projects every designer comes across is a wedding invitation, and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to share a few tips and tricks. Our tutorial’s wedding is forest-themed so that we can take advantage of the beautiful wilderness vector files found in our current bundle.

Let’s get started!

Step 1:

Since we are working with a font bundle, we are going to do the majority of our tutorial in Illustrator and then move over into Photoshop for the background and final touches. To begin, open up a new document in Illustrator at 4.5 x 6.25 inches/ 300 DPI. If you are making your invitation to print, set your color mode to CMYK. Since mine is just for fun to be viewed on a computer screen, I set mine to RGB.

We are going to jump right in and start with the fun part – the fonts in this week’s bundle! For our first word, “Please,” I wanted to create a curve for visual interest. The best way to do this is type on a path. First, select the line segment tool by pressing “/” and double click anywhere on the page. Create a 2-inch line without changing the angle.

Place the line at the top centre of your page. Always make sure that you have “Smart Guides” and “Snap to Point” selected under “View.” These will make it a lot easier to find centre and align objects to one another. If they ever become annoying, they are easy to turn off by simply clicking them again under “View.”

Select the pen tool by pressing “P” and add a point to the centre of the line by clicking. Then, using the direct selection tool (A) select the centre point and move it upward. I moved mine up by pressing “shift + up-arrow” one time.

Under the pen tool, select the anchor point tool (Shift + C). Click and drag on the centre point to create your desired curve. If you hold shift while dragging, your curve will stay the same on both sides. I created my curve to look like the following:

Now that we have our curve, select the type tool (T) and hover over the left-most point on the line. When you see it transform into a cursor with a wave, click. Your line will disappear and you will be able to type where it was. Centre your type and put “PLEASE” in Burford Rustic Book Light 30 pt. You may have to move your type down a little so it doesn’t hug too tightly to the top of the page.

Next, underneath “Please” in 60 pt. Alegance type “Join.”

Return to the selection tool (V) and with “Join” selected, open up the transformation window by navigating to Window > Transform. Under rotate, put 15 to rotate it 15 degrees. Then reposition it like so:

Using the same settings, type “us” and rotate it the same 15 degrees. Place it like so:

As we go along, outline your type once you are satisfied with it so that the text boxes don’t get in your way as they are much larger than the words themselves. To do this, make sure you have the selection tool (V) and not the type tool active. Then, select the words and navigate to Type > Create Outlines. If you have the type tool active, this option will not be selectable.

Next, leave a space beneath “Join Us” and in Burford Rustic Line Bold type “IN” in 20 pt. It is going to look a little empty for the time being, but later we will be adding decoration to fill out the empty space.

Leave another large space for our decorations and ribbon, and in Botanica Sans 22 pt. type “CELEBRATION” in all caps.

For the date and time of the wedding we are going to be using a few different typefaces and some of our freebies. To start, type “JUNE” in True North Textures Two Regular 17 pt.

In your vector-freebies file, select the following group of numbers and paste them in your AI file.

Take the “1” and “9” and shrink them by clicking and dragging the corners. Holding shift while you drag ensures that nothing becomes warped in the process. Scale your numbers so that they are roughly the same height as “JUNE.”

For the “th” for 9th, use True North Textures Script Regular 15 pt. and place it to the upper right of the 19.

Next in your vector-freebies file select the “at” and place it scaled after the “19th.”

Since our “at” is a little crooked, return to the transform window and rotate it -15 degrees.

Place the “5” after the “at” scaled at the same size. Now we are going to use one of my favorite tricks, re-purposing design elements. Everything can have multiple uses if you know what you are looking for! Since the True North Extras_CS6 file that the freebie elements were taken from didn’t include a colon, we are going to take the exclamation mark and re-use it. With the direct selection tool (A) select the top part of the exclamation mark and delete it. Then, scale the circle and place it to the bottom right of the “5.”

Duplicate the circle by holding “alt” and dragging it directly above to create a colon. Then, place the “0” to the right and duplicate it to create the full “5:00.”

Finally, in the same settings as “JUNE,” type “PM.”

Step 2:

Next, we are going to create the bottom half of our text. Leave another space for decoration and type “as” in Burford Rustic Line Bold 22 pt.

I made up a fictitious couple for my invitations, but please fill in any names you desire! I typed “Amelia” and “George” in separate type boxes using Outfitter Script 33 pt. and leaving a large space for design (you can move your type around your decorations later as you see fit).

Next we are going to dive into some of the wonderful glyphs that come with the fonts in this bundle. With one of your names selected, navigate to Type > Glyphs to open the glyphs panel. To use it, highlight the letter you want to change, find its replacement in the panel and double click to replace. There are tons of beautiful options, but for mine I changed the “A” and “l” in “Amelia” and both “G’s” in “George.”

For our “&” symbol, go to your “vector-freebies” file and choose the following ampersand:

Place it so that it sits in between and a little lower than the two names.

Leaving another large space for our mountain design, type “Begin their greatest adventure of all” in Alegance 26 pt.

Alegance is another font with a lot of really wonderful glyphs. Take a look through your Glyphs panel to see if there are any replacements you would like to use for your text. I replaced my “B” and “n” in “Begin,” “g” and “t” in “greatest” and double “l” in “all.”

For our final line of text, underneath “Begin…” type your address, or my placement address of “Redwood Inn & Cabins, Rushing River Road, California” in Burford Rustic Line Bold 14 pt type.

Step 3:

Next we are going to start placing in the decorations from our vector-freebies file. First, we are going to start with the leaves. Copy over the following items into your file so you don’t have to keep returning to your vector-freebies file for each object.

This is where you can really get creative with placement and design. For mine, I placed the following leaves at the top by scaling and rotating the corners. I always design one side first and then reflect it to the other if I want to keep my design symmetrical.

Before reflecting, duplicate your leaves by either selecting all of them and holding “alt” while dragging them to the side. Then, to reflect them, navigate to Object > Transform > Reflect and choose “Vertical.” Drag them to the opposite side of the page.

Make sure your type is outlined, as I mentioned previously, and place the maple leave with the straight stem directly behind “IN.” To do this, you will need to send the leaf to the back. Select it and press “ctrl/cmd + shift + [“ to make sure it is behind the text. Then, open up “Pathfinder” under “Window.” With both the text and the leaf selected, press the option for “minus the front” highlighted below to subtract the shape from the “IN” out of the leaf.

I placed the other maple leaf duplicated on either side of the “IN” and duplicated the pine needle pointing horizontally out to the edge of each side.

Next, I took the following ribbon from the vector-freebies file.

Place the ribbon in your AI file and reflect it, this time selecting “horizontal” instead of “vertical” so that the main face of the ribbon is now at the bottom. Place it directly behind “CELEBRATION” so that the type spans the banner. Then, use pathfinder once again to “minus the front” and subtract “CELEBRATION” from the banner.

From the vector-freebies file, choose the following circle and arrows to copy over into your file.

Scale down the circle and place it directly behind “AS,” using pathfinder once more to “minus the front.”

Now, take the arrows and scale and place them behind the “AS.”

Currently, the arrows are bleeding through the word “AN” and making it harder to read. To fix this, select the arrows and choose the eraser tool (Shift + E) and use it to erase the area of the arrows that overlaps the circle. If you need to change your eraser size, double click on top of the eraser in the tool bar.

From the vector-freebies file, select the two deer and place them opposite each other on either side of the “AS.”

Take out last leaf that we placed previously and scale and duplicate it on either side of the deer.

From the vector-freebies file, select the divider at the top and paste it into your AI file.

Place the divider in between the “AS” section and the names below. Then, duplicate the divider and place the second between the two sections of type at the bottom like so:

For the final decoration on our invitation, we are going to create a scene using the mountain and tree vectors. Copy and paste each of these from the vector-freebies into the your AI file.

First, scale and place your two mountains next to each other like so:

By duplicating and scaling, I used the following arrangement for my trees, but do play around and see what you like best!

Step 4:

We have finished laying out our type! Before placing it in Photoshop and creating our background, let’s go through and add a dash of color. Since our final type is going to be white on a darker background, we want to choose very light colors to accent our piece with. I chose a very light gray-green and gray-red to work with. To keep my composition consistent, I only applied colors to various objects and not to my type.

First, on my top leaves, I applied the gray-green color of R: 169, G: 183, B: 163. This can be done by selecting the leaves and then going to the Color window and adjusting the slider.

I then skipped the second leaves and added my gray-red color of R: 184, G: 169, B: 163 to the next ones like so:

On the ribbon, I wanted to add a color to only the back two parts. To do this, I ungrouped the ribbon by selecting it and navigating to Object > Ungroup. Then, I could select just the back parts and apply the gray-red color. Instead of retyping in your RGB amounts, simply select the object you want to change the color of and use the eyedropper tool (I) on the object that already has the color you want.

I alternated between the two colors across various objects on my composition, avoiding using it on the text, like so:

Finally, select all of the remaining black text and objects and change them to white. They won’t be visible in your AI file, but when we paste them into Photoshop we will need them to already be changed to white.

Step 5:

Now, let’s start our Photoshop file to create the background for our type. Open up Photoshop and create a new document with the same specifications as our Illustrator file.

First, we are going to place a beautiful Old Paper Texture image from Deviant Art into our file.

Directly above the paper layer, create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer with the Saturation set at -100. Now we will only see the texture through our photo and not the yellowish tint of the paper.

Download this lovely Leaf image from Pixabay and place it in your PSD file, scaling to fill the page.

Set the blending mode of our leaf layer to multiply and set the Opacity to 65%.

For an extra layer of texture, we are going to take another Forest image from the wonderful Pixabay and place it on top of our other layers. Scale it to fit and move it so that the path sits near the centre.

For our forest image, set the blending mode to overlay and change the opacity to 25%.

Create a new layer by selecting the page button at the bottom of the Layer’s Panel. In the new layer, select the gradient tool (G) and pick the second option, fade to zero opacity. For the color, use R: 62, G: 72, B: 60. Choose the radial option for the gradient, and then click and drag from the center of the image to create a circle of green radiating outward like so:

Set this new layer’s blending mode to exclusion.

Duplicate the gradient layer to create an even more matte effect.

For one last layer of matting, create a fill layer by navigating to Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Colour. Click “none” for colour, exclusion for blending mode and 75% for opacity. After clicking OK you will be prompted with a fill colour screen. Input the green colour we just used (R: 62, G: 72, B: 60).

Next we are going to create another gradient layer, but this time to add some colour to our composition. First create a new layer and select the gradient tool. Make sure your gradient is set to radial and reverse (see circled at the top in the example). Now, click on the gradient preview to open up the Gradient Editor. We are going to choose the preset gradient of red to green, but since we clicked reverse our centre will radiate green. Change the opacity of the green to 50% by clicking the black box above the horizontal preview in the Gradient Editor. Once your settings are done, click OK and click and drag from the centre of the composition to create the gradient.

Set the gradient layer to an overlay blending mode and an opacity of 35%.

Now, return to your AI file and select the entire composition. Paste it in your PSD as a smart object. It should not need any scaling or repositioning as it was built to size in Illustrator.

Set the blending mode of your pasted type to Hard Light so that we can see some of the photo bleed through behind the coloured areas.

Finally, create a Brightness/Contrast layer on top of our entire PSD file with the Brightness set at 45.

And we’re done!

The finished piece is a romantic, lovely invitation perfect for a wedding in the woods. Hopefully you learned a few new tricks to use in your next project! Despite mastering a beautiful mix of fonts, we barely scratched the surface of this extensive collection of type.

Remember to share your designs on the Facebook page too, as we love being inspired by the way you make these tutorials your own.

Hopefully this tutorial inspires you to use your fonts in new and exciting combinations. If you haven’t already, remember to purchase your bundle for an incredible 99% off before it expires!

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