As with most things, the longer a completed job sits in my flat files, the more likely I am to not look at it very often. I’ve got several, however, that are worth pulling out and highlighting. So, from time to time I’ll be doing that, especially with wedding invites and announcements as we head into high season.

This extensive invitation suite used the cardinal as a central motif. To avoid an overload of red, we tried to balance the use of the color so that it served as a visual and textural (rather than a symbolic) anchor (and I suppose, in that case, it’d be an albatross… note to self: don’t mix metphors).

With the exception of the envelopes, all of the pieces were printed on 300gsm Copperplate, a fantastic mould-made paper from Hahnemühle that takes impression nicely and feels supple in the hand. And to balance the red ink, we used a rich black—Pantone’s Black 5, which has a nice build with a healthy dose of rubine red, helping to soften the stab of straight black ink.

Especially pleasing, and I think especially successful, was the two-color work on the cardinal. Check out the closeup below—the feather texture almost jumps off the page. All in all, a nice find in the archives. Here are some shots of the entire set: