Behind the Scenes: The Papier Wedding Collection

Here at Papier, we love to collaborate. Coupling up with our brilliant artists and illustrators is one of our favourite things to do, but we also get excited about creating our very own collections in-house. Our all-female team of designers are a rather talented bunch (if we do say so ourselves) and have recently pulled together to create quite possibly our most beautiful wedding collection yet.

“We’ve released just under one hundred new designs and, not to be cliché, but there really is something for everyone,” says our stationery design manager, Jess. “Each design in the collection has been so thoughtfully worked on and seeing them come together has really highlighted the individual styles and talents within our team of designers and illustrators. Everyone has such a variety of creative skills, from hand-lettering to illustrating. It means we can bring so many different visions to life and add such a variety of incredible new designs to the Papier site!”

We spoke with the girls who headed up each of the trends in the collection to talk design inspiration, creative techniques, plus the little things that saw them through the late-night sketching marathons and painting sessions.

Jodie on Destination
"For our Destination designs, we looked at popular wedding locations around the world. Morocco stood out for its use of patterns within tiles and architecture, and we wanted to achieve something that pulled elements of historic and contemporary design together. The hotel and retreat El Fenn in Marrakech does this really well, so we looked at details in the architecture and interior design and its use of bright colour.

We also found that more and more couples are getting married in Aspen, Colorado, which inspired our Twilight Mountains. The idea was to keep this one simple. I think the line drawing on the dark, midnight background creates something really magical that could be used even for those not getting married on the slopes.”

Alice on Typography
“I’m so excited about the new Typography collection. Apart from getting your information across simply, the designs really communicate your wedding style. Each typeface has its own kind of visual personality and it’s just about matching that to yours. The collection is intended to suit a range of weddings, from traditional ceremonies that might include full names or a monogram on invitations, to modern weddings that call for minimal sans serif type and a playful layout.

After lots of image collecting and research, my first step is usually always sketching, but when working almost solely with type I needed to jump in and start experimenting with the different letterforms on Photoshop and InDesign to see how they interacted with one another. Although seemingly simple, some were quite complex to create. The Bold Monogram was perhaps the trickiest, as it involved a lot of new alignment tweaks and help from the tech team to ensure that the personalisation process is a breeze!

The collection has a mix of traditional wedding tones, so muted blues and pinks as well as more unusual, fun colours. The Classical Monogram invitation in rust is probably my favourite; I love the earthy colour and it’s unlike anything else we have. I also really like Nom Au Complet in fuschia just because it looks like it would be a fun wedding to attend!”

Beth & Fiona on Floral
Beth: “Botanicals are just perfect for weddings. Flowers set the scene for your big day, and the invitation is one of the first chances to show guests what’s to come. After initial moodboards, I mostly used watercolours to create the designs in this collection. I’d start by sketching in pencil and loose painting, to warm up and create natural shapes.

We also used the cyanotype process for the very first time – it took lots of trial and error! Essentially you combine two different chemical solutions to create a UV-sensitive liquid, which you paint onto watercolour paper in a darkened room, add pressed flowers, then expose on a sunny windowsill. It was tricky with the unpredictable British weather! The print wouldn’t expose fully whenever the sun hid behind a cloud, but we got it in the end and the effects are really striking."

Fiona: “I mainly worked on floral and botanical illustrations, using fine line pens for delicate details and layers of texture, occasionally adding some digital colours. The Fern Wreath, for example, was made using several smaller illustrations of different types of ferns, like maidenhair, silver leaf and tree ferns. I intertwined a mixture of shapes and styles in the leaves to give the design a very natural, ‘growing’ look.

I also enjoyed working on the Palm Leaf – it was a fun collaboration between Beth and I. She had a really strong, clear vision from the beginning to create a modern, chic tropical design inspired by the graphic shapes and shadows of an Areca palm leaf. I created the initial illustration in fine liner with a tiny nib, then minimal green colours were added digitally. Beth then worked with interesting crops of the illustration. The end result was a really sophisticated suite.”

Jodie on Modern
“Our Modern collection was designed with edgier, alternative weddings in mind, for couples who’d prefer to have more of a party to celebrate their marriage rather than a traditional ceremony. We looked at geometric shapes, cutting them up and playing around with compositions. Geo shapes can come across as quite playful, so it was a challenge to get it right, keeping them simple and chic enough to appeal to weddings.

We also created a fresh, elegant painterly style, contrasting bold colours with soft, romantic tones, which was inspired by one of my favourite Australian designers, Cassie Byrnes. I loved being experimental with it and not too careful with how I painted."

This collection was made with the help of…

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