Studio Sully
Invitation Suite · Event Stationery · Custom Artwork
Studio Sully is a multi-disciplinary studio in Los Angeles designing and producing destination events for clients who want tradition bent rather than followed. They brought us in on the paper. Invitations, stationery and custom artwork for a wedding that was later photographed in Vogue.
SITUATION
An event designed down to the last detail, with the paper still unresolved. Studio Sully had built a full point of view for the celebration and needed the printed pieces to arrive carrying it, not undercut it. Guests would hold the invitation months before they saw anything else.
DIAGNOSIS
Wedding stationery is almost always chosen from a catalog, which is exactly why it reads the same at every wedding. When an event has been art directed as specifically as Studio Sully art directs one, a template is the first thing that gives it away. The invitation is not an announcement of a date. It is the first frame anybody sees, and it sets what they expect when they walk in.
DECISION
Design the paper as the opening statement of the event rather than as an accessory to it. Everything printed had to come out of the same visual world Studio Sully was building on the ground, so the suite that arrived in the mail and the room people eventually stood in belonged to each other.
WHAT WE BUILT
A full invitation suite for Studio Sully, from the outer envelope through to the enclosure cards. A stationery system that carried across every printed piece the event needed. Custom artwork made for this celebration and no other, which is what kept the whole thing from looking bought. Pieces from the suite were photographed in Vogue's coverage of the wedding.
