Favor Magnet Design

This could potentially be turned into a save the date magnet, but this design is actually a favor magnet.  The idea is to send them with thank you cards as a momento.  At 5x3.5 inches, this design fits 3 nicely sized photographs, the wedding date, and the couple's names.  Along the horizontal line, we can even fit in the married last name.

In this case, the lines are teal colored, but whether that is a good option for your personal version really depends on the photographs;  It might turn out that the lines should be white or black to contrast with the photographs, in which case, that curved border and the names could be in your wedding color.

Check out 5x3.5 inch magnet pricing here:
http://www.savethedateoriginals.com/35x5_Magnet.php

25 free photo fridge magnets

A rare contest/giveaway is now underway on the Save the Date Originals facebook page.  Submit a family photograph and get votes for a chance to win.  4x2.5 inch photo magnets with clear envelopes would be an excellent addition to your holiday card mailings this year!

Ticket Week: 7

Ticket save the date magnets are very popular here at Save the Date Originals.  This week, blog posts are featuring new ticket ideas & variations that people have had me (the designer) working on this year.

Featured ticket number 7 is a 3x7 inch magnet design.  3x7 inches is obviously a little larger than your usual ticket.  So why go with 3x7 inches?  You go with 3x7 inches when you need the space, be it for a fancier design, fancier font styles, more space for wording, or, you just want a nice large print of a photograph.

This particular save the date design is a modified version of one already on the website.  This version is a save the date for a 10th year wedding anniversary.  With this size, we were able to fit all of the wording, along with some text inside that inner border. 

The best thing about anniversary save the date magnets is getting to use a wedding photograph!

The quote over the photograph is: 
"An anniversary is a time to celebrate the joys of today, the memories of yesterday, and the hopes of tomorrow…."

Ticket Week: 5

Ticket save the date magnets are very popular here at Save the Date Originals.  This week, blog posts are featuring new ticket ideas & variations that people have had me (the designer) working on this year.

Number five is a new 2.25x6 inch photo save the date ticket design.  This is also yet another new magnet size.  Pricing would match up with the 2.25x5.5 inch and 2.5x5.7 inch magnet sizes, posted here.

This magnet design is fairly simple.  A photograph, the "seat row section" wording to add the ticket-like feeling, and a cute wordplay for baseball in that the couple is going to "step up to the plate".  There is plenty of room for the featured photograph.

Ticket Week: 3

Ticket save the date magnets are very popular here at Save the Date Originals.  This week, blog posts will feature new ticket ideas & variations that people have had me (the designer) working on this year.

The third ticket design is a new version of the 2.5x6.5 inch TicketMT11 magnet design.   This design was originally a baseball ticket design...  now it becomes a hockey ticket design.

One of the fun things about tickets is the various cute wording plays that people come up with for different sports;  In this case we have a couple that is "going for a goal".

Ticket Week: 1

Ticket save the date magnets are very popular here at Save the Date Originals.  This week, blog posts will feature new ticket ideas & variations that people have had me (the designer) working on this year.

The first new save the date ticket design is based on a football ticket.  This couple went to  Auburn University, and wanted to show off some team spirit along with their photo and save the date info.

This ticket is mostly brown and white, but there is a bit of the orange and blue Auburn University colors.  This is a good example of a ticket design that closely mimics an actual ticket, but, without the use of any trademarked logos.

This ticket design ended up at about 2.6x5.7 inches.  Pricing for this magnet size would be the same as that which is posted on this page:http://www.savethedateoriginals.com/magnetpricing5.php

Just in time- September's favorite project

Just before the end of the month, behold September's pick for the favorite project.

This time, it's a thank you card.  This is a folding card of about 6x4 inches.  The design includes three photographs of the couple and a few flowery flourishes.

What makes this card really cool is that it's made out of a shiny metallic card stock.  Have you seen cards with a pearly shine?  That is what the metallic card stock does.  It's not often that people choose metallic card stock over regular matte white card stock, but when they do, it always looks cool.

This couple previously went with an awesome set of pocketfold invitations, also made with pearlescent metallic card stock, printed with orange and pink colors.  Excellent stationery from start to finish for this event.

Q: Will it print out just like I see it on my computer?

A: Probably not!

You may think that it shouldn't be that difficult to promise exact colors- but it is!



When it comes to online printing services, the translation from what you see on your screen to what you see on the printed piece that arrives at your door is more complicated than you might think.

Professional printers also use a 4 colors to create all of their images (Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, and Black). Your computer monitor uses RGB, and colors and be bright indeed on your monitor. Have you every tried printing out your own design, a design with delightfully bright colors, only to find yourself with a printed color that was much duller, washed out, than you wanted? This is because the color you wanted actually isn't actually printable without highly specialized means.

When it comes down to it, if your design has brown and blue colors, your printed piece will too. But maybe the colors will be a little darker than you expected; Maybe the color shade didn't turn out exactly as you envisioned; Maybe the photograph will have more contrast than you saw.

The fact is: There are a lot of different models of computer monitors out there, and each one will have a variety of settings. My own monitor here has not just settings for brightness and contrast, but also for "tone", which will switch it between yellow, blue, and magenta tints.

Flat screens have proliferated because they are really incredibly space efficient, and easy to handle. However... they are just really not good when it comes to proofing images that will be printed.

What can the printer do? We can not come to your home and calibrate your computer. Instead, we can only warn you.

Just about every major online company has the warning- though you may have to dig to find it.

"Overnight Prints does not guarantee color will match the preview as it appears on a customer's monitor, as we cannot compensate for color variance on each customer's monitor."

-Overnight Prints


"Are the colors on my proof exactly like my magnet or card? Because of the different settings on computer monitors, and the difference between computer colors and 4-color printed colors, the colors on your proof are not an exact representation of the colors to be printed on your magnet or card. "

-Magnet Street

95% of a printing company's customers will be happy with their printed design. Printed with quality machines, produced by quality designers, it's not as if the printed design is going to look bad. But... will see the occasional complaint from someone who felt that their photo print was too dark, and that is regrettable; It was someone who fell in love with their photo design as they saw it on a bright monitor.


Take this quote from Theoart at wordpress.com

"When it comes to prints being too dark, usually it is a result of an expectation of prints to appear exactly as they appear on a person’s monitor and not the printer itself. What this means is that the dark prints are really printing the way the image is but the users monitor is making a dark image look brighter. Being in the photo and fine art printing business, this is the one complaint that I hear the most.

This is most common for people using flat panel (LCD) monitors since they tend to emit brighter imagery than a more traditional and bulky computer (CRT) monitor. Laptops can be the worse culprit in all of this. MAC users may also experience this issue due to differences in the Gamma curve."

Is there a real solution to this issue? No.

But, I do have a trick for you. If you calibrate your monitor so that the last 3 dark colors in this band (below) are indistinguishably dark, and the light colors are clearly definable, you will have a better feel for how dark things will print.



It's not surefire- some printing companies will automatically adjust images in various ways to attempt compensating for how they expect most of their customer's computer monitors to be set. They might be adjusting their online proofs... and they might be adjusting the file that they are printing. (You didn't think shutterfly and other photo companies just printed your exact photo file, did you?).

Another tip: Laminated prints do usually look darker than matte prints.