Design on the side.

Latel, I've been keeping busy doing some design work here and there for my generous family and friends. I did a Save-the-Date for my sis (The Paper Lion in McKinney did a great job printing them up).
And on the heels of that, it just so happens that Lauren's future brother-in-law, John, is getting married this month. His sweet mother, being an advocate for the arts (and unemployed artists apparently) asked if I would design an invite for their rehearsal dinner.

The event is at the Sons of Hermann Hall, an excellent live music venue built in 1910, so I thought it would be cool to design the invite like a concert poster. Not only that, John's family has ties to the Texas Sons of Hermann fraternal organization dating back over a century ago.

For inspiration, I looked to the Nashville institution Hatch Show Print.
If you follow country music, country music history or the history, art and culture of the American South, sooner or later you're bound to run into the letters, images and unmistakable "look" of Hatch Show Print. They're one of the oldest working letterpress print shops in America, and over the years their posters have featured a host of country music performers ranging from Hall of Famers Hank Williams, Bill Monroe and Johnny Cash to present-day stars and bands like the Old 97's, Wilco and Coldplay.
With that in mind, as well as wanting something distinctly Texan, I chose to emulate the poster at right.

Below is my interpretation, created in Illustrator and Photoshop. You may notice that the cowboy and ring theme carries through from my previous design - what can I say, I like the imagery.

Click for larger view.

That was the initial design, but to include the family history, a couple other items of information and make it more interesting, I decided to take a more rustic approach in Photoshop.

Click for larger view.

It has been a lot of fun working on these, and if anybody's interested, I've got several more cowboy/wedding ring ideas in storage.