GABRIELA & ROBERT


This project revolved around the bark paper that the invite was mounted on. The two of them had found it some time back and wanted to use it for this invite. Gabriela also asked for the horsetail plant. We opted to keep everything brown after playing around with some color. She'll be incorporating that into her flowers, which will be spectacular since she is an amazing florist and her sweetheart is in the business of importing all the lovely petals we see around LA.




digitally produced.
invite, map card, and matching return label

IN THE NEWS

Daily Candy Los Angeles has featured me as their stationery select for their 2008 Fall Wedding Guide

SHHHHHHH! IT'S A SURPRISE!

Joann's family is planning a surprise party next month for her 60th birthday. I just finished up the invites this weekend.
Invite, Map card, RSVP, address stickers for both RSVP envelope and return sticker for the outer.

MICHELE AND SEAN'S TAHOE WEDDING



I have always wanted to design a wedding invite in a poster form. When I suggested it to Michele she was equally as excited to do something different. Because the wedding was out of town in Tahoe, I built the design like a vintage ski poster. There were two follow up sheets one with travel plans and the second giving a weekend itinerary. Because they're such active people, they had golf games, hikes and cocktail parties all lined up for their guests.

The invite, sheets and RSVP were all shipped in a kraft tube with matching icon label. Needless to say their invites were a big hit [the guys especially loved this one!]

Printed digitally

DAVE AND KHOBE'S WEDDING



Dave and Khobe were having a small ceremony at the home of a close friend for their wedding. They wanted something simple and elegant to match their event.

Khobe's instructions to me were: twigs, brown and green so I did a custom illustration for them and set type to match their style. We then lined their envelope with match chartreuse paper that highlighted the flowers on the twigs. She was very, very happy with them!

click on any image to enlarge





If you're wondering...what is letterpress?
Letterpress printing is a meticulous and labor-intensive craft, resulting in high-quality invitations that bear more in common with a fine art print than a commercially printed product.

Letterpress is an age-old, artisan printing technique that involves applying one ink color at a time to vintage printing presses using printing plates. The plates have a raised surface where the ink is to be applied. When the inked plate meets the paper, it leaves an indentation.

JOHN AND JANE WEDDING INVITES


John and Jane asked me to do their wedding invites and I was so happy to do the work for them. John is one of my favorite people in the world and Jane is just as lovely. They got married this August at the Long Beach Museum of Art. Jane wanted pink, green and vine/flowers featured on their invites. I came up with this sweet pea illustration that gave them the colors they wanted as well as some simple elegance.



I added a hand drawn map to bring the formality down a little bit. John and Jane are older they wanted to celebrate with a wedding but didn't want it to be so formal. We kept the pink to a minimum so that John didn't feel too "girlied out". Then envelope was lined with a simple floral inclusion paper and the invite and map were then wrapped with a thin pink ribbon 3 times.



We complimented the letterpressed invites with digital versions for the menu and folded pocket sized program.

ANNIE AND CHAD



Annie and Chad wanted something traditional yet a little bit of funky thrown in. We found that balance will flower illustrations I did for them and a hand drawn map to make it seem a little more organic.

Printed digitally.

JESSICA'S DOCTORATE DEGREE PARTY



Jessica graduatED this summer with her Doctorate degree in Clinical Psychology. As she should, she had a big party to celebrate her success with a Luau / Polynesian themed party. I did two custom illustrations of a hibiscus flower that we carried through on the RSVP and the return labels.

Invite, map and rsvp printed letterpress
return label printed digitally

A chartreuse envelope and a burgundy liner kept the pallet Polynesian, yet simple and elegant. The map was also hand illustrated. We were on a tight deadlined for this project and were able to complete in 2+ weeks.








CLICK ON ANY OF THE IMAGES TO ENLARGE.

ALIX'S 11TH BIRTHDAY



Alix is a little girl that loves to dance. For her 11th birthday she wanted to have a disco party [complete with disco ball-thank you very much]. I decided to make her invite look a little like a club flyer with a hint of Madonna thrown in. What we got was a stylish flyer-type invite that was folded and mailed in a square envelope.

At her party she gave away a matching CD and then followed up with a matching Thank You card.

Printed digitally

ROB'S 40TH BIRTHDAY



Rob turned 40 last summer. His lovely wife began planning his surprise party about eight months prior, going so far as to open a new bank account to stash money and opening new email accounts to send out information to the guests. It was quiet an elaborately planned event. I designed this in mind because Rob has really handsome salt and pepper hair and looks great in blue and grey.



We opted not to print the invite for fear they would find their way to Rob somehow. Instead we PDF'd the invites to each guest by email. We also included travel information for all of the out of town guest that were flying in.



Lastly, we followed up with a matching menu [digitally printed] that sat on each of the plates at the dinner.

GORD'S ELEGANT DINNER



Gord and his wife Michaela are some of the most stylish people I know. When Mick asked me to design a menu and place card for Gord's birthday I couldn't resist. The theme was an elegant black and white setting.

Printed digitally

BABY DUGAN BIRTH ANNOUNCEMENT



Baby Dugan birth announcement.

Two colors, letterpressed
Matching envelope and return label that was printed digitally.

Mom wanted space for a photo which is the area to the right of the sheet.

IN THE NEWS

I recently had a little write up in the District Weekly a great local Long Beach paper you can read it here.

YOU ARE AMAZING

In case you didn't know...you are AMAZING

Available at The Kids Are Alright in Long Beach, CA and Mercado in Silverlake, CA

or
Available for purchase contact me at richele[at]richiedesigns.com for purchase info

Letterpressed

PERSONAL BUSINESS CARD


Designing something for yourself is the hardest client you'll ever have. I like this a lot more now that it's printed than when I first designed it. Sometimes, with personal work, you get to the point that you don't hate it...and you know that's as good as you'll get. Everyone else seems to enjoy it though, I get a lot of compliments on it. It's slighly oversized 3.5" x 2.5". Someone asked me recently why I did it at this size, "because I can!"

About Richele:
I've been making greetings and invitations for nearly 20 years. It seems to be the perfect combination of my love of graphics, illustration and now printing which I have been doing for the last 6 of those. I had the opportunity a few years ago to buy a vintage press and set up a small studio. I am printing my heart out now for everyone from individual brides to boutique hotels.

I spent 14 years working in the advertising and graphics world, working along side the best creative and business minds in Los Angeles. Through that work, I had the opportunity to work with everyone from Fortune 100 companies to small business owners and that experience has proven invaluable to how I approach and source my work for my private clients now.

In addition to my experience in the big ad world, I also spent a year and half as an editor for Apartment Therapy Los Angeles learning about social media and discovering the latest in home design.

I continue to learn new techniques in art, exploring photography and enjoy not getting paid for blogging along side some of the most incredible women I've met around the world while writing.

Click here to go back to my portfolio
or visit me here at my everyday site, fashion, style, art and things I love

SOME OF MY OTHER WORK

SGM's face lift New for Summer 2009
I had done Scented Gloss Magazines first graphic header in late 2007 and when she revamped her site this summer she decided to redo a little bit of everything. We gave her a new icon and applied it to the header as well.


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MADISON PARK GREETINGS



I published a set of greetings with Madison Park Greetings in December of 2007. I was very excited to attend the National Stationery Show in May 2008 with my work present. It's been one of those odd little dreams to have my work in New York City at that event.

Mostly geared toward young, hip 30-something women.
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REPAIR PAL





RepairPal.com was a logo project I worked on in 2007. This first version of the logo was mine [top image], it since has gone through some transitions to it's present state [full site]. Repair Pal is an online guide to car repairs similar to Kelly Blue Book. Since going live it has been written up in everywhere from The New York Times to Consumer Reports. Their iPhone app using my orange car trunk icon has been Apple's staff favorite pick and one of the top free application downloads.

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MICROSOFT KEY CARD

This is sort of a silly project to post because it's only a hotel key card to a Microsoft Convention. But, it's Microsoft. I helped a friend who needed a design-y eye and someone to build the file for her as she was heading the production of the on-site event.

I also get a great kick out of the fact that I used all Apple products to create it. wink, wink
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THAI YOGA THERAPY



Thai Yoga Therapy was a fun project for me with my yoga instructor Gabriel Hall. He asked for a square card so we made it 3"x3" and printed it on super chunky stock so it feels really good in the hand. Thai Yoga Therapy is actually a massage technique. I ended up using a hand illustration to capture the icon I wanted to present for Gabriel.

Gabriel is the owner of Yoga World Studio in Long Beach, California with his wife Michelle.
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GARY SCHECHNER



Gary Schechner is a good friend of mine. When he asked me to design his business card I was a little shocked [and honored] since he knows just about every major art director in Los Angeles. He wanted to use the lower case "g" as his logo mark and I came up with this. My good friend Dave Gath then incorporated it into Gary's website which is pretty neat.
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CCRA



CCRA is a new client of mine. They wanted a simple font based mark that will translate later to a stationery system and other pieces.