hillary schuster

» styling paper for photo shoots «

I’m back from Alt Summit and…honestly, I don’t even know where to start to break down the experience. I’m still digesting it and will try to get up a post about it in the next week or so. In the meantime, I’m going to get back to (somewhat) regularly scheduled programming…

Last week I shared some design work that I had done for my friend Katie’s wedding in the fall of 2009. The images I shared of the print goods—the ones taken by my husband and I—represent the first time I have ever styled a shoot.

When preparing to take the photos, I sought out inspiration for ways to enliven these still, flat pieces of stationary. Spurred by the great images I found (like the ones above), I sought out objects around my house that were relevant to Katie’s wedding theme and colors. I also used components from other parts of the design process (namely the large paper dots that were used in the photo booth backdrop).

Styling and taking images of print work is a lot harder than it looks and I hope to get better at it as I document more work for this site. I’m going to make photography a big design/blog goal of mine for 2012. I got some great tips at Alt from the the bloggers on creating DIY tutorials panel: Creature Comforts, Not Martha, Makes and Takes, and Charles & Hudson / Built by Kids. Anyone have any great resources or tips for shooting flat goods without any serious skills or equipment?

Anyway, you can see my design work on the other post. Below I’ve included images of Katie’s and Aaron’s wedding invitations—designed by Kyle Fletcher, letterpress printed by Olivia Samson and styled by me.