Original research · Edition 1
The Event Design
Trends Index.
Every figure here is counted from work this house designed — 91 commissions, 548 finished pieces. It is not a survey, and it does not describe the market. It describes one book of work, in the open, because nobody else publishes this at all.
How many pieces are in an event stationery suite?
Across 66 built suites and 548 finished pieces, the median event stationery suite carries 9 pieces (mean 8.3, range 1–16). Only 7 pieces appear in more than half of suites: invitation, menu, place card, welcome sign, save the date, table number, RSVP. Everything else is chosen, not assumed.
What this is, and what it is not. This is a census of one design house's own commissions, not a market survey. It cannot tell you what the industry does. It can tell you, exactly, what a working studio produced across every suite it has built — which is a thing nobody in this category publishes, and which is the reason it exists.
Every number carries its own sample size, because they differ: 91 commissions carry pieces, but only 22 carry a locked typographic specification and 24 carry a recorded formality. A single headline figure would be wrong for most of the rows beneath it, so there isn't one.
01
What a suite actually contains.
548 pieces across 66 suites that have been built. 25 further commissions are at moodboard or direction stage with nothing drawn yet, and are excluded — averaging them in would describe suites that do not exist.
The median suite is 9 pieces. The range is 1 to 16, and the mean of 8.3 sitting below the median says the same thing the table below does: a few very large suites, a long shoulder of ordinary ones.
The invitation is the only near-universal piece, at 95.5% of built suites. Everything else — even the menu, even place cards — is a decision. That is the single most useful fact in this document for anyone planning a budget: there is no fixed list you are obliged to buy.
02
Piece frequency, by share of built suites.
20 named piece types. “Suites” counts how many of the 66 built suites include the piece at least once; “made” counts individual files, so a suite with three table numbers contributes three.
| Piece | Suites | Share | Made |
|---|---|---|---|
| Invitation | 63 | 95.5% | 64 |
| Menu | 54 | 81.8% | 56 |
| Place card | 49 | 74.2% | 49 |
| Welcome sign | 47 | 71.2% | 47 |
| Save the date | 41 | 62.1% | 41 |
| Table number | 41 | 62.1% | 41 |
| RSVP | 36 | 54.5% | 36 |
| Thank you | 29 | 43.9% | 29 |
| Bar & drinks | 27 | 40.9% | 28 |
| Envelope liner | 27 | 40.9% | 27 |
| Programme | 26 | 39.4% | 27 |
| Envelope | 25 | 37.9% | 26 |
| Favour tag | 18 | 27.3% | 18 |
| Monogram | 15 | 22.7% | 15 |
| Itinerary | 9 | 13.6% | 9 |
| Seating chart | 7 | 10.6% | 7 |
| Announcement | 5 | 7.6% | 5 |
| Signage | 5 | 7.6% | 5 |
| Invitation (digital) | 3 | 4.5% | 3 |
| Digital | 1 | 1.5% | 1 |
A further 14 pieces are one-offs the catalogue has no name for — door cards, clue cards, bring-a-dish cards — and are counted in the totals but not listed as a type. 38 further files are studies, roll-ups and support documents, excluded entirely. Excludes only files the house's own NOT_A_PIECE table names as studies, roll-ups or support documents. The sibling commission inventory counts to a different question and lands 2 files apart; this report makes no claim about what is or is not in the catalogue.
03
Typography: two families, almost always.
Read from the locked typographic specification of 22 commissions — what a designer actually set, not what appears in a stylesheet.
The median suite uses 2 typefaces, and none uses more than 3. Across all of them 19 distinct families appear. That ceiling is not an accident of sampling — it is a house rule showing up in the work, and one commission's own specification records the reason in a single line: a third family is a contract violation.
A caution that matters more than the numbers: a font census taken by scanning stylesheets is worthless. The house's own font scan reports Georgia in 3,009 of 4,457 files, purely because it sits in CSS fallback stacks. It is not used as a design choice anywhere. This table is built from design specifications instead, which is why it is small and why it is true.
04
Typefaces, by commissions that specify them.
| Family | Commissions |
|---|---|
| Fraunces | 10 |
| Hanken Grotesk | 10 |
| Jost | 5 |
| Yellowtail | 4 |
| Cormorant Garamond | 3 |
| Bodoni Moda | 3 |
| Dancing Script | 2 |
| Playfair Display | 2 |
| Josefin Slab | 1 |
| Raleway | 1 |
n = 22 commissions with a locked typographic specification. 1 further file records a family count rather than family names and is excluded rather than guessed at.
05
Colour, and how much of it.
Palette structure across 26 commissions with a locked colour system.
The median palette holds 6 roles — not six colours arranged prettily, but six named jobs: ground, ink, accent, and so on. The range runs 4 to 10.
More telling than the count: 19 of 26 systems name combinations that are forbidden, and 13 record how the screen colour must translate to print. A palette that only lists what is allowed has not been finished.
06
Formality, as recorded at brief.
Each commission's occasion contract records a formality from 1 (most relaxed) to 5 (most formal). n = 24; median 2.5.
| Formality | Commissions |
|---|---|
| 1 | 3 |
| 2 | 9 |
| 3 | 7 |
| 4 | 5 |
The distribution's centre of gravity sits below the middle of the scale, which is worth stating plainly because the category's imagery suggests the opposite: most events being designed for are not black tie.
07
Occasions in the book of work.
48 distinct occasions across 91 commissions.
| Occasion | Commissions |
|---|---|
| Wedding | 14 |
| Brand Launch | 8 |
| Milestone Birthday | 7 |
| Baptism | 4 |
| Corporate Anniversary | 4 |
| Housewarming | 3 |
| Christmas | 3 |
| Restaurant Opening | 3 |
| Unstated | 2 |
| wedding | 2 |
| Anniversary | 2 |
| Dinner Party | 2 |
| Birthday | 2 |
| New Year's Eve | 1 |
08
Method, and its limits.
How was this measured?
scripts/build-design-trends-index.py walks the same commission corpus the studio's internal boards use, counts pieces per suite, and reads the locked design specification of each commission. No figure on this page is typed by hand; a test re-measures the corpus and fails the build if the page and the work disagree.Is this a survey of the wedding industry?
Why do the sample sizes differ between sections?
Can I cite these figures?
See the work these numbers came from.
Every suite counted here is browsable — the moodboard it started from and each finished piece, by occasion.
Open the showroom How a commission works