The process of designing your own wedding invitation is quite possibly the most nerve-wrecking experience ever. Not only is my future mother-in-law the client, but in one single packaged system I have to visually define who [the future wife] and i am/are. And that’s scary stuff, yo.
Jumping into print design for me is a lot like going to high school for the first time. Looming in the distance are unknown large, shadowy figures ready to embarass and ridicule you. Rumors and horror stories of “what happened to so-and-so” and the impending feeling of getting what’s coming to you as a freshman that makes you sick to your stomach at lunch every day. Or, something like that.
See, I do web design. Not print. Print to me is what the “big boys and girls” do. I never adequately learned the print process. I think almost exclusively in terms of web. I think heirarchacly, not systematically. There’s no such thing in web design as paper choices or paper sizes, 2-color or 4-color process. There’s one standard screen size, a handful of universal fonts and unlimited color palettes. Almost everything in web is a pyramid shape in how they relate to one another (index at top, work down in relevance), but not in print. Print scares the crap out of me.
The problem at hand is the continual, nagging relationship that I have with my fears. After college, I took the plunge (out of desparate need for money) into a job as a web designer. I got over the cold water shock and eventually adjusted to life in the big pool of web design. However, looking over at the *other* pool over there is a different story. I don’t think I have the chops to play with those kids over there. Heck, I don’t even know how to swim the same way that they do.
Why in the holy hell I decided that I wanted to do this is beyond me. I mean, I know that it seemed natural and logical, seeing as I’m supposedly a “designer” and all. But seriously, I must have been on drugs because now that I actually *have to do this* (read: beyond just saying, “sure, i’ll do that”) I want to run and hide. I know relatively nothing about paper choices, rag count, spot colors or packaging systems. The possibilities are so wide-open it makes my head swim and knees weak. And besides all of that, I have the mother-in-law calling the shots. And let me just tell you that she and I have, uh, different tastes (or rather, she has different tastes than her daughter…who is doing the presentation of concepts since I’m Capt. Wussy when it comes to this). Let’s just leave it at my version of an invitation is not cream linen paper, center-justified script font, 24pt, in gold foil stamping.
I think I’ve sat here, repeatedly banging my face against my desk for easily the last hour…just *trying* to come up with something. Anything. I have a few designs but go all ADD and can’t finish one because I get another idea.
It’s hard to teach yourself how to think differently. Ugh.
