I need a reason to buy this dress. I can’t justify doing it unless I have a reason. Help me find a reason – I must have this dress!

watercolor garden rosette dress, $275 :: j crew

These save the dates were so much fun to work on that we have to share!

The bride and groom (who have been a joy to work with) wanted to excite their wedding guests for their destination Seattle wedding, so we designed these fun save the date cards with the theme, “Our Story Continues…”. The wedding date is marked with a gorgeous Swarovski crystal and the save the date card is accompanied by a custom map from Laura Hooper Calligraphy.

Laura created a beautiful map for Sacha and Will highlighting some of their favorite Seattle spots, which we then backed with gold accent paper. We also attached magnets so that their guests could give these fun little keepsakes a prominent spot on their fridge. Since most guests will be coming from out of town, these will be a great preview of some of the fun stuff to do here.

Order your own custom map from Laura via her website here.

Here is a quick follow-up to Whitney’s “obsessed” post from earlier:

Interestingly, a couple of hours after she posted about scarves she has been obsessing over, we received a catalog from Veer and saw these great new “Uppercase Scarves” featuring Helvetica. I immediately loved them, but wondered if they really would help keep me warm on cool days here in Seattle. This might be a case of fashion before function.

Also in there, I saw this great new “Chest Hair” shirt that made us laugh featuring Compendium, a new favorite “must have” script.

all images via veer.com

I’m obsessed. I wear scarves every single day. I know I have a problem, but I can’t help myself. Especially when there’s so many beauties out there just waiting for me….like these two below. I want, I want…

each from anthropologie.

touseled scarf

double decker scarf

These invitations were ridiculously fun to work on! The bride and groom (whom you may remember from their scandalous tabloid-star-wars save the dates) are planning a destination wedding in Scottsdale, Arizona. They wanted a fun vintage travel poster-style invite that would convey all of their needed travel details (which there was a lot of, believe me!)

We designed a folding invite that is an impressive 20 inches in length when fully open! It includes all necessary travel and event details, along with a map and directions to help guests navigate Scottsdale upon arrival. Best part? It’s only one piece, so guests can just stuff it in their bag on their way and have it handy-dandy when needed.

The festive travel design is made more fun by the colors – black, white, deep red, and metallic silver inks were used to make the design really jump off of the page. The sparkley silver envelopes only add to the fun!

My favorite part of working with Alison and Chad was how open they were to having fun with the normally boring stuff, like transportation, rsvp yes/no selections, etc. (see photo below for some of the hilarity!) If I were a guest of their wedding I would be so excited to get this invitation in the mail and even more excited to actually read it!

Just announced: We’ve won King 5’s BEST INVITATIONS IN WESTERN WASHINGTON! A huge thank you is in order to all of you clients, colleagues, friends, and blog readers that voted for us!

Here are just a few of the glowing reviews our former clients posted about us on the King 5 website:

“Whitney and Jonathan are truly remarkable in the personal care, and consideration they take with every design. Their invitations are the first step to a memorable occasion!”

“The Brown Sugar Design husband and wife team – Jonathan and Whitney Speir – is amazing! They listen to your ideas and take your design concepts to the next level. I could not be more pleased with the Save the Dates and Wedding Invitations they have created for us. I also appreciate their phenomenal customer service. They are right on top of everything and deliver within their promised timelines. They strive to work within your stated budget and offer ideas on how to achieve the look you desire within your price range. They are simply fabulous and bar none the – BEST – in Western Washington!”

“Brown Sugar Design did our wedding invitations for us, and we were very pleased with the product, creativity, and relationship that we had with them during the process. I was in New York and my future wife was in Chicago, and they of course they were here in Seattle. Despite that, they communicated everything promptly to us even though none of us were in the same part of the country. If they can do that, I am sure that it will be an even better experience for anyone here!!!”

“Brown Sugar Design designed beautiful, innovative invitations for us and they are wonderful to work with! Everyone says that our invitations are the best they’ve ever seen!”

Thank you again to all that voted for us and to all that left us such nice reviews!

Oh, if only … we had an actual guest bedroom. I’d want this bedding for it. Sigh.

Perch Bedding Collection by Dwell Studio for Target.

Looking at the album art Whitney posted about yesterday, I immediately thought of those color-blind tests that we all had to take when we were kids. It must be all those small circles making up the image.

I then had to post about one of my favorite t-shirts I bought from Threadless. It’s the ‘I Heart Color’ shirt that ends up mocking all those people with color deficiencies. Sorry – but you can’t read the shirt anyways.

I love this album artwork for the new Killers album, due to be released November 25.

I was recently doing some research for a non-wedding design project and was comparing some video hosting options. Vimeo was of course on the list, and while perusing the site I kept looking at the logo. After spending quite some time on the site I decided I really like the logo.

It, along with the simple site design, really creates some great design that is easy to understand, navigate and has a nice friendly feel. All at the same time giving users a nice product that is also easy to use. See below a video I embedded from their site. Oh, the beauty of typography!

Typography in Motion from ilovetypography.com on Vimeo.