City Council unanimously approves Reyes’ motion to ban plastic bags in Los Angeles
As Los Angeles residents, we have been whining, fighting, and writing letters to City Council and waiting for news on this new proposal, long in the making. Today’s news has everyone hoarding their plastic bags for the day we have to leave the city to get one. San Francisco has already been on track with this and more large cities are sure to follow.
Ed P. Reyes’ motion to ban polystyrene food containers in all City facilities beginning July 1, 2009 was unanimously approved by the City Council today.
What kind of environmentally responsible bloggers would we be if we didn’t include this hot new music video from The Abe Lincoln Story on an occasion like this?

The City Council, by a 13-0 vote, also approved an amendment introduced by Reyes today that bans plastic bags by July 1, 2010, if the State has not imposed a fee of at least 25 cents by then.
“Plastic bags have been the graffiti of the L.A. River for decades,” said Reyes, who chairs the L.A. River Ad Hoc Committee.
The plan requires officials to replace food containers made of polystyrene — commonly known by the brand Styrofoam — at city-owned facilities such as Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), public libraries, the Convention Center and City-sponsored events.
“We’ve gotten to a point where we need to act as a city, where we can have real results. We’re trying to do it in a way where we can educate and inform the public of what we’re doing,” Reyes said. `”It’s going to take time to change.”
After the citywide ban of plastic bags July 2010, consumers will have to use their own canvas bags or pay 25 cents for a paper, compostable or biodegradable bag. Of that fee, 3 percent would go to the retailer, 3 percent will go to the state, and the rest of the money will go back to the city to fund an education campaign.
The plastic bag and polystyrene bans complement the ongoing Los Angeles River Revitalization Master Plan, spearheaded by Reyes, which proposes transforming 32 miles of the concrete-lined River into a greenbelt linking communities.

Wedding Invitations were really really boring until about 10 years ago. One company (Taylor Corp) owns most of the large commercial wedding invitation companies. They pretty much controlled the entire market.

About 13 years ago, right when the web started to gear up, a few brave couples wanted to individualize their weddings. They didn’t want the sweet embossed invites with angels and castles. The internet offered a chance to find unique vendors, and communicate with each other. At the same time, Martha Stewart launched Martha Stewart Weddings (the magazine).

Weddings, and the wedding invitation, would never be the same.

Letterpress also began to make inroads. Martha discovered Julie Holcomb printers, and featured her letterpress printed invitations, and even shot an episode with Martha at the press. That gave letterpress a jumpstart. (a few letterpress printers were experimenting at the same time.) Scott, my partner, had been printing letterpress as an artisan hobby since the mid 1980’s. I learned late 1995, with a local book group. Everyone was experimenting in their studios. But, most of these designers, such as Julie and Scott, came out of the fine printing and fine press movement. Julie studied with William Everson at UC Santa Cruz.
In 2001, there were only about 4 of us letterpress printers exhibiting at the National Stationery Show in NYC. Crane was trying to figure out how to get into letterpress. William Arthur was bought by Hallmark, and soon jumped on the letterpress bandwagon.

This year, it was just about all letterpress at the Stationery Show. Scads of great designers out of art school. Amazing.

Amazing!!

So what does desire for a fabulously modern wedding invitation have to do with Oscar Wilde?

We think it’s delicious that the trend for highly creative wedding invitations has its roots in the Aesthetic Movement of the early 20th century.

Beautiful papers (inspired by the opening of Japanese design to European artists), fine letterpress printing (the Fine Presses of the Arts & Crafts movement), theatrical graphic design: all reached a zenith in the late 1920’s. Beautiful books were laboriously produced in limited editions of a few hundred or so. The Great Depression put an end to these amazingly beautiful book productions.
Commercial printing and graphic design went through another series of upheavals through the mid century. The ascendance of the offset press over letterpress, for example. (During the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s letterpress equipment was phased out and junked.)

But none of these changes were as profound as when Computer Graphics and computerized prepress took over in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

Art schools and Graphic Design schools underwent an utter revolution. Design technology was completely decoupled from the previous technologies and printing equipment. Proof presses and type cabinets were left stranded. What happened, in effect, is that the outmoded printing equipment could be used exclusively for artistic expression.

Fine printers, typographers and graphic design professors all have a great sense of history, but many of their students didn’t have a clue about anything that came before computer generated fonts and graphics. More and more graphic design teachers began to offer classes in handset type and the old printing techniques. (Previously, this was only taught to as a trade class in high school!) Art Center, The Center for the Book, and a few other schools became an important influence on the re-introduction of letterpress as a craft. Book Arts became an important movement again, with beautiful limited editions and unique books as objects becoming quite popular to produce. These books are irresistably beautiful, but it is near impossible to make a living producing them. The techniques that people developed began to move into invitation design in the 1990’s and really took off in the past few years.
Contrary to what the wedding magazines tell you, most invitations from the late 19th century through the 20th century were letterpress printed, not engraved. The invitation stock may have embossed borders and decorative elements, but the invitation itself was usually printed letterpress with handset or linotype. (we have a large collections of early invitations from about 1840 - 1940) The printing quality wasn’t always great.
What has changed is, the invitation itself has become an artistic expression of high craft and aesthetics.
Oscar Wilde would be charmed.
“Artists’ books are books or book-like objects, over the final appearance of which an artist has had a high degree of control; where the book is intended as a work of art in itself. They are not books of reproductions of an artist’s work, about an artist, or with just a text or illustrations by an artist”
From: Artists’ books : the book as a work of art, 1963-1995 by Stephen Bury
In other words, the book as a stand alone object. The Wedding Invitation has also become an artifact.

Almost all invitations will cost more than 42 cents to mail. If it’s square, if it’s thicker, if it’s more than 6-1/8 inches on two sides, it will cost at least 20 cents more. The Post Office increased rates about 6 months back, and finally sorted out the increases.

If any of your wedding stationery (mailable) has the slightest bump, add 20 cents.

So, if you are trying to spruce up a really simple invitation by adding a bow, a tie, a pressed flower, anything that adds a bump, add 20 cents per.

Don’t get your mail returned. Don’t get caught by surprise. Never mail out your invitations without getting a finished piece weighed at your local post office.

If you get frustrated with the lack of aesthetics when choosing stamps for the extra postage, check out the fun you can have making your own stamps with Zazzle.

The Democratic National Convention, held in August in Denver, has created strong environmental mandates and standards about food (local and healthy), catering supplies (compostable), transportation, and Democratic Party related consumer goods. (fanny packs, totes, etc) Some good people are on board to help them pull it off, but so far, the press has reported only on problems. Last week in the Wall Street Journal and this weekend in the NY Times. Some of the catering companies have been moaning about the local food requirements.
If the organizers can pull this off, it will do great things for the green events cause.

So here we are getting ready to launch the brand new Invitesite. Almost a year of work. The new site is all custom coded by Alex, and we’ll be able to offer loads of new designs for your Green Wedding pleasure :). Lots of new letterpress decorated designs coming too. (We just rebuilt a lovely large press with sturdy bearings and a large bed.) So, with our inventory of 7 large presses we’ll be able to execute some fine designs. Scott and I are looking forward to an extremely creative year. YIPEEEE!!!

Invitesite’s eco wedding invitations are featured in the upcoming local ABC News feature on Green Weddings. Great stuff and good suggestions.

Yipee,  a group of local green wedding vendors will be exhibiting at the upcoming Los Feliz Street Fair, Sunday June 8th, 11 am - 8pm. We will be located in the “Green Scene” Eco Showcase. 
Our group includes Angelica from Angelique Events and GreenWeddings.net. Cake, signature drinks and some neat giveaways are in the offing… Invitesite will be showing some of our fabulous new eco wedding invitations.

Will update more today — looks like some fabulous bands will be playing.

I just came back from the National Stationery Show in New York.  Yes, Green was marketed as the NEXT HOT TREND. Concurrently, the International Contemporary Furniture Fair is held at the same time. Lots of very modern, eco furniture and building materials companies exhibit.

Great. Terrific. Then why, why, why isn’t someone putting pressure on the Javits Convention Center to set up recycling bins?

Food Service is an astonishing example of waste. How many people eat at the Convention Center? Thousands per day?  Do each of them really need a DISPOSABLE STYROFOAM TRAY??

Soon, please, vegetable based disposable containers and why can’t we wash trays like we used to do?

MSNBC reported today that Jenna is having an “Organic” Wedding. Wow. Green Weddings are now “Official”.