Hello!
I should state up front that I *am* a designer by trade--a designer of circuit boards. No, I have no graphic design training, nor much marketable talent outside of a nerdy lab. I do, however, have a sister-in-law with not much money who asked me to design her wedding invitation. Ok, so I am a bit of a typophile because, frankly, the technology of printing through the ages has piqued my interest in typography. So, Ginny asked for my help because I have a decent font collection and because I will work for beer.
Anyway, Ginny is feminine, but not "girly", and both she and Joe are pretty informal people by nature, outdoorsy, and warm. They are getting married in Cape May, New Jersey. That is all I have to go on, since she has no guidance of style to give me. So, I purchased a license of Zaner because I was looking for a good excuse to do so and also because its ornamental-yet-masculine look seemed appropriate for Ginny and Joe's personalities. (Turns out, they love it) I paired it with Goudy (the eponymous one) italic because it is of roughly the same era and I thought that it paired well with Zaner. The mossy-colored grass (a pair of Zaner glyphs) is intended to suggest the sea grass of Cape May, and would be a recurring motif in all printed material I make for them. The paper stock (6" x 6") is sandy colored (again, more beach) and has a simple embossed border ~0.75" from each edge. The walnut ink color is Ginny's choice; she vetoed my preference of deep ocean blue.
Anyway, I pair fonts together about as well as I pair wine with food, which is to say, not at all. Remember, I work for beer, not Merlot, and design telecom equipment, not telecom logos (many of which suck). So, what do you think of this pairing? Does it seem appropriate or am I committing a typo-sin by letting them share a page?
I am using Pages, so I don't have access to many of the niftier features of Zaner and had to handle some of the trickier letter combinations and variants by hand. I had trouble getting the swoopy "H" (tried all the "H"s) to play nicely with the "tt" of "Scott" and this was the best I could come up with. Does it still read "Scott", or have I renamed him "Scoll"? Oh, and if the inimitable Mr. Hunt is reading, I hope I haven't offended you with dreadful application of your lovely typeface.
I kept the layout simple because these are simple people and, frankly, I don't have the knowledge to do anything less simple anyway. Do you think that it has acceptable composition and balance? I really like my sister-in-law and don't want her invitees to hurl upon opening the envelope. The problem is, I've been staring at it for so long now that I have stopped "seeing" it, and would really appreciate some outside opinion. (please be gentle--remember I don't do this for a living!)
Thank you all in advance very much for your time!
[edit: I realized that my image viewed on a web browser doesn't show the edge of the image, so it is hard to see the layout. Viewed on a browser, the upper-left corner of the browser window is the upper left corner of the finished card and the text is centered in the square you make from this margin]
