From Invitation to Birkon

I wanted to use a recent order to talk about the process of developing invitations and birkonim. For an upcoming wedding in August I sat down with the bride and we spoke about her style, her hatan‘s style and I asked if she knew what she would like. This is usually the hard part, as many people do NOT know what they want. Often they have an idea of what verse they would like to use, or perhaps they would like to create a logo.

This is not a problem at all. I usually pull out my stock of invitations,  Jewish art history books and books on Ketubbot such as Ketubbah: Jewish Marriage Contracts of the HUC Skirball Museum and Klau Library. We then set aside things that the bride likes, the groom likes, the couple like in common. In this case I was only talking to the bride who relayed the discussion to the groom. The couple wanted something simple and had a verse selected.

I  prepared a selection of designs. I usually do the complete design myself, but in this case part of the design made use of an element from  opengraphicdesigns.com. Simultaneously we were also working on laying out the text of the invitation, choosing English and Hebrew fonts, making sure things were spelled correctly etc. After going back and forth a few times, the design as shown was chosen.

Below is the Hebrew text layout too. It’s cropped to protect the innocent on the web. The Hebrew font is a non-standard Hebrew font. 

We then started to work on the birkon design. Because the couple chose one color ink birkonim, we could use the same design in its entirety. The couple decided not to include the verse on the birkon cover, and instead included their names and wedding date. The couple sent the invitation design to a printer of their choosing, and the birkon cover design was sent to our printer. After a review of a proof from the printer, the cover is printed and the order shipped.