This week, I got married to the love of my life, Eric Daniel. He is a top notch guy and I believe that we are the happiest people alive. Disclaimer: a friend reminded me recently that “the promise sustains the love, not the love the promise,” which is fantastic advice. Marriage is about much more than happiness. However, it still must be said that we’re super happy.

With this design, I wanted to celebrate my marriage and dive into something FUN. Eric and I are keeping our original last names, so our brand (gross, I know) has always revolved around our first names. Both of our initials are ED, so he wanted to do something with “ED squared,” but when I found out what ED stands for a few years ago (NSFW-ish), I abandoned that idea.

MATERIALS USED

Open source fonts: after testing 12, I chose Motion Picture Personal and tightened the leading.

Open source brushes and gradients (can’t remember where I got the brushes, sorry!)

Photoshop, my old flame

 

METHODS

I wish I could take credit for this design format, especially after I discovered the creation process was fairly simple. But I used this short and foolproof video tutorial and loosely followed the steps.

The only thing that has changed since the video was uploaded is that her method (control + click) of rasterizing text no longer works. I imagine that there is an updated shortcut, but I just right clicked the layer and hit “rasterize” manually.

THOUGHTS

It’s a strange age we live in that this kind of art makes me nostalgic for my childhood. But with regular art out of the question (if you’ve seen my handwriting, you would know), Photoshop and photography opened a lot of doors for me. These tools made it possible to bring the world in my mind into the physical, or at least digital, realm. Even in something as simple and silly as this—doodling my name with my crush’s name, essentially—I’m grateful to live with the freedom to create. To create word art, and more importantly, to create a loving and lasting marriage.