Editor’s Note: This project won Best of Region for the South in PRINT’s 2016 Regional Design Awards. See all of the winners here, and don’t forget to enter the 2017 Regional Design Awards.
There’s only one thing to do when you create an invitation design for an event like the Lowcountry Field Feast, where chefs come together with Charleston, SC, farmers to create a true farm-to-table feast: You make it as scrumptious as possible.
That’s exactly what Stitch Design Co. did for the invite to this popular annual gathering, which pulls in $125 per ticket and benefits Lowcountry Local First, a nonprofit supporting sustainable agriculture and farm-fresh food by connecting producers with community restaurants and institutions.
Stitch co-founders Amy Pastre and Courtney Rowson have been designing the invite for this event since 2010. “Each year, we challenge ourselves to do something new and to use a unique material or printing process,” Pastre says. For their award-winning piece, they silkscreened the invitation onto a reusable tea towel and utilized the tag of the towel to convey pertinent details.
South judge Bill Grant called the design the “epitome of Southern charm and spirit.” It’s the simplicity of it that he admires. “For me, this project represents one of the best qualities a designer can practice—restraint! After all, simple is the hardest thing to pull off effectively.”
The towels were printed at Sideshow Press, Stitch’s sister company, so Pastre and Rowson were able to watch the project come to life as it was essentially created completely in-house. They quickly learned that kitchen towels are not always sewn evenly, though, which required a fair amount of press adjustments. In the end, the design worked well and was forgiving with small imperfections that only added to the award-winning Southern charm.
