29 Dec Interview with Couture Invitation Designer Marc Friedland, Part 2

As promised, I’m back with part two of my interview with event industry professional and creator of extraordinary invites for all occasions, Marc Friedland. (You can check out part one here.) Read on to learn what inspires him, how he balances design and business concerns, thoughts on client relations, and his pick for a favorite recent project.

Where do you find inspiration?

By being out and about in everyday life. It’s from fashion, it’s from pop culture, it’s from history.

What’s the most important thing you need to know from a client?

I think the most important ingredient is for a client to be open to possibility, to be open to trusting the creative process, that there is always a solution to a creative challenge.  

Do you have any favorite materials?

I love all materials. I’m material agnostic. You see trends in materials, like Lucite for invites or really thick cards or gimmicks like sounds chips. I think everything has its time and place; it’s how it’s incorporated and how it delivers the message.

Do you listen to anything (music, talk radio, etc.) while you work?

Because I grew up in the 60s I love a lot of quirky stuff. It could be classics to hip hop to anything in between.

What advice do you have for balancing design and business?

Great design doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. It’s the thought and intelligence behind something…We’ve been through so many different challenges and crises and experiences in 27 years, that we know how to spend people’s limited budgets wisely to deliver the biggest impact for the dollar.

Do you have a favorite project that you recently worked on?

I just came off doing a wedding that was magical…[The couple was] doing a three day event. [The bride] was an artist herself. She loved art. We came up with a very simple idea, that this was the art of love, a weekend celebration. And we made  each of the three different happenings for this event — the rehearsal, the ceremony, and the farewell — as expressions of art: one was based on surrealism, one was based on romanticism, and one was based on street art. To tell that story we created beautiful ceramic hearts, and each one came in its own little box that was reflective of that particular style of art, and the three of them together commemorated this weekend experience.  

Finally, if you could choose 3 PMS colors to represent your personality – which would you choose and why?

Lime green is my signature color. It just makes me feel good. It’s growth and new life.

Another color that I’m loving a lot right now is the champagne gold in the new iPhone. It’s very refined, it’s very elegant, it’s very tasteful. It’s not gold gold and its not champagne, it’s kind of in the middle and I love the richness of that. It’s simple and understated.

The last one is a color  which is a new favorite because of how it makes me feel . It’s a color that that we created for the wedding I just mentioned and we called it, “Electric Coral.” There is something about t it that is so vibrant and so happy — it’s not hot pink and it’s not flourescent and it’s not orange —it’s Electric Coral. Every time I look at that color it makes me smile and feel good. There’s something on a vibrational level that is really wonderful about it.