60th Wedding Anniversary Celebration Poster
I created this memento to give as my present for the married couple – Ken and Valerie.
Ken said he liked the Folding Funeral Memorial that I had created for my mother – Betty. At the time he said he would like one for himself. Giving me the idea to design a poster to celebrate Ken and Valerie’s 60th wedding anniversary.
As Ken and Valerie loved jigsaws, I thought it would be fun to give them a jigsaw of the poster too. The poster had to work in a frame and as a jigsaw. The first challenge was to match the finished dimensions of the print with an available size of 2000 piece jigsaws.
The framed poster was to be a surprise present and to display at the anniversary party. Having known the family for almost 20 years, I already knew the events I needed to feature for a third of the poster. I worked with their three sons to fill in the early years.
I chose the best wedding photo to use large as a focal point on the left. I then roughly placed the most important other images. I had to find a subtle way to visually navigate the story. Using a central, vertical strip of photos of just Ken and Valerie I could imply a division in the timeline. Starting on the left side, then across to the top of the right and down.
The early photos were black and white which helped define the timeline. Next was to place momentous events; their sons’ weddings and the births of their two grandchildren. From here the challenge was deciding not only the best photographs, but the ones that added to the story.
It would have been boring to align all the photographs, then make them the same size too. So I placed a series of larger feature images to burst through the outer border. I defined two different border treatments. For images that appear to be behind others I have removed the borders altogether. For images that appear to be on top I added a white border. To emphasise the layering I also added a drop shadow to all of the top images with white borders.
The earliest design had a white background, but printing out tests I found it needed a beefier background. It would have been a dull jigsaw to have a white background too. A black background would have been too funereal and a grey one too tentative, so blue was the next choice which worked well with more test print outs.
The party was held on the 3rd of July. I am delighted that Ken and Valerie loved my presents, showing the framed poster to all of the guests at the party.
Colin Walton at WaltonCreative.com