REVIEWS
See what Grafixdeals/ Zazzlepreneur Members and Customers of LeahG are saying about her courses, trend guides and graphics bundles!
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Invitation Course Feedback
The "Beginner's Guide to Invitation Design" definitely deserves a rating of 5 "Excellent" I've been at Zazzle for a while and enjoy designing invitations for common occasions. And I have to admit that I was still able to learn a lot.
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The course material is structured and understandable. I personally find the illustrative examples fantastic because I am a visual person and learn more from what I see than from explanatory text.
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I found the topic of color and the cultural examples the most helpful, as the connections between colors always gave me a headache.
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The various aspects of the invitation design are wonderfully understandable and clearly explained. Personally, I find the order and structure very understandable.
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Every beginning is difficult. Practice makes perfect. The more invitations I create, the more security and routine I get. Besides my day job, I don't have quite as much time to work on my shop. That's why I'm not progressing as quickly as I would like. But I'm on the right track.
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The amount of information provided is initially overwhelming. That's why I read the course every day and always find new information that I then incorporate into my designs.
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The course more than exceeded my expectations. The wealth of information is enormous. I work on it every day to improve my designs.
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I think that all topics in the course were described in great detail. Thank you very much again for putting in so much effort.
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I didn't have any challenges or difficulties. Of course, after so much information, your head is spinning. But I implemented the teaching material bit by bit. It's like painting by numbers, but takes longer.
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My invitations and accompanying cards now look much more professional.
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For me, the invitation design course definitely added value because I now have a lot more information about what to consider when designing invitations.
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Of course I recommend the course. Anyone interested in designing invitations should benefit from this information. Unfortunately, I discovered that some people don't understand when someone tries to help them. Not everyone is willing to learn and take on the work.
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All in all, I really enjoyed working through the course and applying what I learned. The course contains a lot of experience and even more work. I am very grateful for this and am happy to be part of this community.
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1. On a scale of 1 to 5, how would you rate the overall quality of the Design Course?
5 – There was a lot of good information.
2. How engaging did you find the course material?
The course material is interesting. I have taken graphic design courses before so a number of the items were not new to me. However, for someone who has never taken the courses I have, they stand to benefit a lot from this course material. I still came across things I did not know.
I am aware of the ‘Rule of Thirds’. I agree with it. I find that this rule automatically forces you to organize the information. I have used this rule on landscape oriented corporate invitations. I was happy to find ‘landscape orientation’ in your examples as well.
I agree with font pairing. The fonts should reflect the type of wedding the couple is having and be readable. I remember attending a wedding back in the 1980s. The printer bought a super fancy script font which he used for the couple’s invitations. NONE of us could read the script. Since a normal sans serif was used at the bottom for the church name and reception hall, I went by that and just confirmed the details at the wedding shower. Back then choices were limited but not today. If you don’t put an effort in to be clean with your work both with layout and using a legible font, you will be passed over. At Zazzle that is unlikely to happen that the font itself is not up to par but there are other ways to “sabotage” one’s work which is what this course went into.
3. What topic/s did you find the most helpful?
Using high quality images that you have the right to use matters. There is nothing worse than getting a cease & desist order from the rightful owner. Thankfully this did not happen to me but I know of a designer that had to chase a corporation whose designer took her work and ‘rearranged it’.
Choosing the correct size of the invitation matters. For many corporate events that I have attended, a simple well designed postcard will do.
The original graphic design course I took did not really go into researching trends as the focus was on the type of corporate event it was and which clients the entity was trying to attract. So I did find it helpful in this course to be directed into researching trends. Weddings & showers do change over time. When I look back on the weddings of the 1980s in my own area, they do have differences with what happens today. I was surprised how many weddings around me now take place in the country on farms and ‘destination weddings’. That was unheard of years back as everything was in the city’s “nice banquet halls”.
‘Matching stationery’ is a good list. That is one thing I struggle with.
Keeping colors down to 3 is another good rule. I am a rainbow person and totally love color so rules like that had to be ingrained into me with each graphic design and art course I’ve ever taken.
4. Did the course adequately cover various aspects of invitation design, including color theory, typography, and layout?
Yes, I agree with cultural associations and color psychology. I had to take a ‘cultural communications’ course at university. It was meant for business travellers. Colors and even numbers matter in a lot of cultures. The number “13” is such a taboo number in western culture (USA & Canada) that the 13th seat on an airplane is called “14” as well as the “13th” floor in an apartment or office building.
Typography has to be readable as I have experienced it not being so. White space matters in both invitation design but all around in the online world. Blog posts are an invitation to more, often products and when you don’t make enough of white space, the text becomes hard to read causing most readers to scroll away before they are done. That defeats the purpose so this skill can be transferred to other forms of writing as well.
5. Were the provided examples and practical exercises helpful in understanding the concepts?
Yes. It is with practice that we get better with layouts. I find that even after doing homework assignments, it’s good to let things sit for a few days. Looking at it with fresh eyes helps me to identify areas that need improvement.
6. Did the course provide enough information for you to confidently design invitations for different types of events?
Yes. I had a font teacher who would tell us to think of an emotion and then start writing out a word. It was funny as to how the lettering style changed when you did such an exercise. When you look at fonts from Zazzle’s selection, that is something to keep in mind. What does it remind you of? There is a time and a place for each font. Technically speaking you can use any of them for an invitation. You just need to identify the audience first as well as the type of event you are designing for. So yes, I do think the information provided in this course is helpful.
7. How satisfied were you with the amount of information provided?
I found it to be quite thorough. I like that you also mentioned flourishes. This tends to be left out of ‘font discussions’ when putting a project together.
8. Did the course meet your expectations regarding the depth and breadth of the content?
Yes. I like how you went into where to place the graphic elements as well as suggesting a black and a white overlay text version. I would not have thought of two versions.
9. Is there any specific topic or area you would have liked to see covered in more detail?
I think you covered many different areas of what to look out for when putting together invitations. Many people do not think about mood and tone enough. It’s more that they want to have a similar style to another popular designer but they don’t think about the “Why it is like this”.
10. Were there any challenges or difficulties you encountered during the course?
I found putting together invitations takes practice as you are working around the text with graphic elements. This is something newer to me in practice as I am a fabric designer. I am very use to taking my motifs and scattering them all over the artboard and making sure that they repeat. For invitations, the text comes first and the motifs are placed to enhance the words. This might be why I have started on other products first with my motifs as I have to rethink how I place everything. I have gotten better and I think I will succeed with invitations as well.
11. Do you feel more confident in your invitation design skills after completing the course?
Yes, I do. There are so many personal invitations one can design for. I have an idea for a type of fundraising that would be a micro niche. I have some ideas for graphic elements. Having read so much on the internet about this problem, I am surprised that there has not been this type of genre on Zazzle yet. I plan on pursuing this after the Christmas holiday season.
12. Overall, do you believe the Invitation Design Course provided value?
Yes. I really like the wording suggestions for the different types of invitations. I’m not good at coming up with “fun lines” yet so this is especially helpful.
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Anca
Nov 20, 2023
My rating is 5, it was an excellent course!
I found it surprisingly engaging given that I’m not interested in designing invitations, but I still applied parts of it in general design.
I loved the font pairing examples – I already did some font research beforehand, but it was nice to see how you do these things, given that you are way more experienced than me on the Zazzle platform.
I especially liked the lists with invitation themes and occasions in order to brainstorm invitations adequate for my niche.
I find it a lot easier to design invitations now. I know where to start from, including the market research part.
I am very happy with the information I received and even if invitations are not my niche, they do sell well on Zazzle and I received useful tips for designing other products, more suited to my niche.
Even if I previously felt invitation design is such a huge topic on Zazzle, you reduced it to its essentials when it comes to designing them.
I am much more confident. Thank you for taking the time to create this course and share your experience!
Yes, especially if one specializes in invitation design.
I am very likely to recommend this course.
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Sheila
Oct 10, 2023
On a scale of 1 to 5, how would you rate the overall quality of the Beginners Guide to Invitation Design Course? (1 - Poor, 5 - Excellent)
What topic/s did you find the most helpful? The occassions and themes list, the list of Zazzle fonts written out (thank you so much for doing this!) and the examples of invitations with the graphic placement and wording.
How satisfied were you with the amount of information provided?It was a good amount of info but not overwhelming.
Overall, do you believe the Invitation Design Course provided value? It certainly provided value and got me to think differently about a few things.
How likely are you to recommend this course to someone interested in learning invitation design? (1 - Not Likely, 5 - Very Likely)
Course Feedback and Testimonials
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