We are quickly approaching our daughter’s first birthday. That meant we had to figure out her party theme and send out invitations. Fortunately, we planned ahead enough to successfully achieve this task. However, for many the process of creating invitations can be daunting.

Designing your own invitations can be a great way to personalize your event and have a creative outlet. For Juniper’s birthday, my wife and I created the invite above together (ok she did most of the work and I just came in and art directed it). Here are some basic principles we used to come up with that design.

** For those of you afraid to take on invitation design scroll to the bottom for an alternative option. **

Choose a color palette

When starting your invitation choose 3-4 colors that you would like to use. Stick to only using these colors. This limitation will help you design more efficiently, reducing decision making down the road.

Limit the number of fonts

The same goes with fonts. Too many and your invite starts to look like the classified section. But picking two fonts that compliment and contrast each other add nice visual texture. Choose one for headlines (name, theme, etc.) and another for body copy (date, time, location, RSVP, etc.).

Organize your information

Visual hierarchy is very important when it comes to invitations. You want the viewer to quickly know what the party is, who it is for and when. Pay attention to what grabs your eye when you are designing, if the wrong items are popping out then try tweaking things.

Increasing font size or weight, adding color or changing word placement are a few ways to draw attention to the important info.

Keep it simple

If you try to go too fancy more than likely you will get stuck, not knowing how to finish what you started. Keep the invite simple. Some of the best invites I have seen are just a great picture of your child with tasteful text overlayed.

Here is the birth announcement we did for Juniper (not an invite but the same rules apply). Our photographer was amazing and he made my job of laying out the text easy.

Non-Adobe design programs

For those of you that don’t have access to the powerful Adobe suite of tools (photoshop) try out Canva.com or Pages (mac version of word). These two tools will help you make something very nice without needing to know or purchase expensive software.

Now that you have some basic ideas I want to mention one more thing. Design a size that fits in a standard size envelope, I’d recommend 4×6 or 5×7. There is nothing worse than having the best design but no envelope it will fit in I’d love to see what you come up with. I’d love to see your results, so please share them over on the Dadsigner Facebook page.

Alternative option

Still stuck and don’t know what to do? Or maybe you just aren’t a designer. That is okay, Tiny Prints has got you covered. They have fun, beautiful and high-quality products that you just add your information and go. New customers can receive 20% off their first order by clicking here.