Four Tricks to Elegant Wedding Invitation Design

As a graphic designer you've undoubtedly overheard talk of elegant wedding invitation design. Elegance in design is so admired it is often spoken of in reverential tones. But what is elegant design? Many people misconstrue elegance to mean lavish – they believe an elegant design is one with calligraphic text, wavy lines, perhaps a fleur-de-lis. True, elegant wedding invitation design can encompass those things; but it is certainly not limited to them. Going by the definition for elegance, then, an elegant design is one of a refined quality of gracefulness and good taste. Thus, the tricks to elegant wedding invitation design are listed herein.

Keep it clean

One of the hallmarks of any elegant wedding invitation design is plenty of white space. That doesn't mean you have to color your invitations wedding dress white – it simply means that your design should employ plenty of open area between your design elements. This gives a clean appearance that makes your invitations easy to read, easy on the eyes and exquisitely elegant.

Large action photo

Instead of the typical, traditional calligraphic text plain wedding invitation design, you can fill your entire design area with a large action photo of the bride and groom. The trick in this case is to take an elegant photo – perhaps a black and white of a loving embrace, the silhouette of the couple holding hands against the sunset, or even a fun shot of the pair smiling beside a favorite “toy” such as a classic car. Class and elegance go hand-in-hand, so the classier the photo, the more elegant the wedding invitation design.

Light accents

Many designers like to accent wedding invitations designs with florals, wavy lines, swirls, royal symbols and other shapes. These are excellent vehicles for making your design appear elegant and for use as separators between information. Just remember to make light use of accents – in many cases, a single line will do just as well as three parallel lines. You can also try special watermark or opacity effects to give your wedding invitation design a certain soft elegance.

Odd numbers

Often designers like to round out designs by making sure an even number of elements are congruent with one another. For example, you might have two decorative accent lines running down the right side of your wedding invitation designs, so you have a natural urge to balance them out with two identical lines running down the left side of your designs. Resist that urge and go with an odd number of lines, two on one side and a single line on the other, to make your designs pop and give them an elegant flair. You can apply this same principle to any number of design elements. Just as in home decorating, odd numbers are striking; balanced even numbers are boring.