As a designer specialising in all things digital and interactive the natural assumption would be that I would feel inclined to design an awesome website, which a part of me did. But I chose to do the exact opposite. I’ve always loved that experience of opening a beautiful envelope and finding an even more beautiful wedding invitation inside. It’s like opening a very special present and I wanted my guests to experience that. But how could I showcase my love of interaction design without the help of digital technology?

I conceived an interactive wedding invitation in printed form. A flat invite that my guests could essentially play with over and over again. I’ve spent a good deal of time typing up the next set of sentences and deleting them in an attempt to explain what I mean but I feel it’s probably best to show you:

Like all projects, it was not without its hardships. The cutting, pasting, arranging the artwork in a very specified way, aligning everything together – was taxing to say the least. But worth it. I ended up with a nerdy invite that was interactive whilst still remaining traditional in its printed form.

The whole invite was packaged into a pretty square envelope where my guests could then untie (like a present) all the other contents of the wedding invite including the map, bridal entourage list and treasure chest poem.

In the end, I was so happy to get them out the door, I made about 80 of them by hand since offset printing and cutting was over a grand in expense. But, that’s what bridesmaids and family is for right?

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Jessa

2012 was an insane year for me. To sum it up in one paragraph I started a new job, led the design in a big new project at the place I work, got engaged, planned a wedding in 6 months, helped launch the first phase of that big new project, got married, went on my honeymoon and then moved to a new apartment. Woah… It was tiring just typing that all up.

But I’m back! To be honest I was nervous coming back, not knowing how my little blog was fairing since I sadly left it for some time. Although, I shouldn’t have been worried at all. I’ve become determined to continue to post things that inspire me of all things art, creativity and design basically all things that make my heart skip a bit.

Through the last year I created a little list of topics I wanted to blog about hoping when I had time there would be enough content for me to get started again. Except now I have found myself in a pickle. What should I blog about first? What topic would most signify my return to blogging? What will be my first post of the New Year? So many inspiring things to choose from…

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Jessa

The problem is I really value my work and since my fiance and I have decided to get married this year I really needed to check off some ultra big wedding items out of my check list to get back to my normal life. So with all that out of the way, I can focus back on work and of course get back to my regular postings in this blog.

So I sincerely apologise for my neglect but to celebrate my return and my newly engaged status I thought I would quite fittingly post a series of awesome and innovative wedding invitations.

I recently attended a design conference called Semi Permanent in Sydney and I fell in LOVE with Kelli Andersen, who created these paper record invites. Paper record invites?? Yes, paper record invites, her invites literally play a low-fi song just with paper and a pin. You MUST see this in action! You won’t believe your eyes!

Seven swans created this very simple, yet effective die cut invitation booklet for this couple. I really love the simplicity of the whole piece. It has a real craft vibe to it and the couple is just so darn cute.

But if you’re looking for something cheaper and still unique this is your thing. How cute is this origami heart, it’s adorable. These were originally Amy Moss’ wedding / engagement invites (from Eat, Drink Chic Blog) but she’s allowed her readers to take her template to create their own little love notes.

And if you want to go ultra geek and retro I stumbled upon these awesome invites. They are the old school viewmasters, where each slide is an image of the couple inviting their guests. How original! It’s slightly expensive (by my standards anyway). But if you’re willing to spend on awesomeness you can buy them at Etsy.

Hopefully you guys have fallen in love and been inspired. Wedding invitations, who would have thought they could be so cool? They totally beat the traditional “script and calligraphy” deal.

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Jessa

Watch and enjoy. Trust me, you’ll be all fuzzy feelings by the end of this post.

Keep smiling and have a great weekend!

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Jessa

Hear him talk about his design process, what inspires him and how he creates those surreal images.

Jessa

But to make something gorgeous out of something so plain and one dimensional is a skills set in itself. One, I myself sadly do not possess, which probably adds to my love for the art form.

So enough of my fan girl ramblings. In honour of Benja Harney speaking at Semi-Permanence this year in Sydney (which I’m crossing my fingers my workplace sends me to) here is some awesome paper artwork by Benja Harney.

Pocket knife paper sculpture for GQ Magazine

Techy gadgets for a Telstra Ad

Sculptural paper wings for Hermes store display

Paper sculpture for Desktop Magazine

Kylie Minogue: The Goddess Edition Pop-up book

Interwoven paper cover for Shigeru Ban in the making

Interwoven paper cover for Shigeru Ban completed

Photos courtesy of Paperform.

Harney’s works range from adverts, packaging, bespoke creations, and pop-up books. His work is so loved right now that big time clients such as Hermes, Kylie Minogue, Desktop Magazine and Telstra can’t get enough of him… Talk about living the dream!

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Jessa

Now I can immerse myself in the process even further with Colour Lovers. A site that allows you to easily create your own colour and pattern palettes, then share them with an online community. Vice versa you can also trawl through palettes that other Colour Lovers have also created.

Creating your own colour palette is incredibly easy. I created the palette below by choosing an individual shade at a time. All of the colours on the site are provided with a hex and RGB code. What’s really nifty though is with each selection I was then given varying shades of the original, allowing me to be more accurate about my choice.

Alternatively, you can choose to create a palette from an image! In my opinion this is one of the best features of this site. An image can evoke strong emotions and in a lot of circumstances this can come down to its colour scheme.

I fell in love with the hues of coral and dusty pinks in an image of balloons I found a while ago and couldn’t wait to upload it into the site’s module. Once the image was uploaded I was presented with a default colour palette and a spectrum of shades that were also used in the image.

Next, I replaced some of the default colour options in my palette with some other shades to really finesse my palette. Within about 2 minutes I had the perfect colour scheme that I feel accurately evokes the emotion and mood of the original image! All in all the whole process took about 5 minutes.

Both features are wonderful and incredibly easy to use. I still have yet to start experimenting with the pattern palette module but I aim to book some procrastinating time today to do just that. No doubt this site will be my obsession for the next month, which is actually very timely as I’m already slowly coming down from the high I received when I discovered Pinterest for the first time.

Colour, it is without a doubt still one of the most debated aspect of any design solution because every individual has their own personal preference towards one or more colours. My favourite colour is baby blue because it calms me but you would never guess that because I love to wear red which has always made me feel empowered. Essentially colour is more than just personal preference: it can target a specific emotion or mood in a person and that is one of the vital life supports of any design.

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Jessa

I’ve been very drawn to underwater photography lately. They never fail to look absolutely magical. So when I came across these series of shots from Seth Casteel I was completely in love.

Now, some of these shots definitely are magical but the others are just plain cute and funny. They will no doubt put a smile to your face and make you feel all fuzzy inside.

On a side note. I’m 50/50 on the photo gallery. I love it but I love scrolling too. I guess I’ll just see how it goes.

Have a great weekend!

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Jessa

This is exactly what Visual.ly is attempting to accomplish. As we speak they are working on an online tool that will allow anybody to be able to create their own beautiful infographics with little to no design skills. I can’t wait for them to release such an amazing tool. But until then they have ‘Visually Create‘ another tool that allows users to choose a theme and create their own infographic gathered from data from their Facebook and Twitter accounts. Very very cool.

I decided to try it for myself. I chose the theme Facebook Monsterizer and in literally just a couple of clicks I had my infographic.

What I love about these themes are they are graphically quite strong. Props to the talented graphic designers working over there!

As you can see, there was a lot of information that was taken from my Facebook profile which I had to allow Visual.ly access to. Some people may feel very uncomfortable about that, but I suppose you could still try it out and then remove those permissions later.

Other themes that you can choose include:

Twitter

• Life of a Hashtag – Analyzes the appearances of a hashtag
• Showdown – Compares two Twitter accounts
• Twitterizer – Analyzes a given Twitter account to create a personalized character based on followers, tweets, and community engagement

Facebook 

• Facebook Monsterizer – Analyzes a given Facebook profile to create a personalized character and highlight top friends, and popular photos and messages
• Facebook Insider – Analyzes the performance of Facebook page content and fan engagement.

They are also working on other themes using categories such as sport, food and politics. So if you want to look out for that I suggest subscribing to one of their social media pages or signing up with them.

Enjoy and have fun!

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Jessa

But I’m back, and I’ve been dying to blog about a group of talented individuals called Designers Against Child Slavery (DACS). A Design Collective encouraging other designers from all over the world to take a stand against the global trading of child sex workers, the modern day form of slavery.

We are a group of artists with a passion for making a difference in our world. We leverage our unique gifts and styles to produce artwork, to raise awareness of the injustice of sex trafficking and inspiring others to use their talents to impact the world around us.

Designers from everywhere use their creative talents to design and submit a powerful and emotional piece of work depicting the sex trade to raise awareness and entice action against it. These submissions are then collected and displayed in a yearly exhibition. There have been 2 exhibitions so far and I can’t wait for this year’s collection to be displayed.

Here are a few of my favourite pieces of work from the exhibitions ‘Expose 2010′ and ‘Episodes 2011.’

“For sale customisable” by Liran Szeiman and Martin De Diego Sadaba. This piece is particularly powerful through the strong ‘dress-up doll’ reference. The child-like visual style juxtaposed with the rather adult imagery of condoms, battered faces and unborn babies are confronting and jarring, yet balanced so that it’s not so overly confronting that I can’t stand to look at it. Its success lies in its ability for the viewer to absorb the information without getting overwhelmed which is very difficult with such a sensitive topic.

“Designers against child slavery” by Jonathan Wong. Simplicity in its finest. I love the minimalist approach Wong has taken to represent loss, lost, and hopelessness. It is so simple yet so strong in its message and brings about a quiet reflection.

DACS by Sarah Blake. This piece is so sad yet so beautiful. Blake really captures the beauty of the child and I genuinely feel like reaching out and carrying her into a happier place.

I’m not sure who the artist is behind this particular painting. But I would love to give this person the proper credit if anyone knows who it is. I particularly love the symbolism of the lotus flowers, a beautiful flower that blooms beautifully from the mud despite all its obstacles. It is a powerful visual representation to represent the survivors of sex slavery.

My hope is that one day sex slavery will end within my lifetime. If you have been inspired just like me and would like to contribute to the cause either as an artist or through a donation visit the DACS website.

I’ve also listed out other amazing organisations that are fighting to end global sex trafficking.

• Somaly Mam Foundation - Somaly Mam is a wonderful and inspiring human being who was able to survive being trafficked as a child to become one of the leading advocates in the fight to end sex slavery. Her foundation helps raise awareness globally, end sex trafficking and help rehabilitate girls back into the working society. Simply inspiring.
• Project Futures: End sex trafficking - Project Futures is a partner of the Somaly Mam Foundation and was founded by an admirable individual who was inspired by Somaly Mam’s story and decided to do something about it. Stephanie Lorenzo is an amazing individual who is now dedicated to encouraging volunteers to raise awareness against sex slavery.
• Project Futures Global – The global platform of Project Futures which also helps people raise awareness in their own communities through simple activities like marathons or movie nights.

I sometimes do work for Steph and Project Futures and it is always one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever done. I never feel I do that much, but the rewards are so much sweeter.

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Jessa