day 36 of 40 days of lettering

4 to go... gettin' there! This quote was another creative interviews piece. It is the motto of Jackson Murphy and Graham MacInnes, founders of Pound and Grain. I futzed around a lot with this one, getting no where with sketches, for some reason. It seemed like a check list of some sort, so I decided to play that up. It's always a fine line to make it look interesting (and I always make it colorful), but not too wacky fun...hope it worked!

day 35 of 40 days of lettering

Day 35 is another piece I did for creative interviews, this time it was an interview with Myles Allpress, senior art director with Fallon. This was a pretty short quote, but it didn't give me any obvious visuals, other than I toyed with the idea of a megaphone shape to fit the word team or Fallon in, but somehow that seemed kinda corny. Instead, I thought I would try to visually play up "team Fallon." You can see below my first pass at this. Whenever I do a lettering piece (or any piece in general), I take a quick pic of my sketch on my phone, take it into AI and redraw. At this stage, I don't care what colors I use at all, which is pretty obvious, I hope! Anyway, I didn't like the way it was reading. Even though, technically if you read it left to right it is correct, visually it read more like " creativity is a team fallon effort at." So, I played around with the effort portion, played with the letterforms more to make them fit together better, added pattern and texture until I was satisfied.

Only 5 more pieces to get to 40!!

40 days of lettering... day 34

Yup, I'm still plugging away. This was a particularly long quote to work with, and seemed especially so since I started working on it the night before it was due :/ Desperate times, made me turn to desperate measures. I knew the only way this gets done in a few hours was to actually use some traditional media :O !!!!!! I know that might sound silly to most, but I haven't used something I've hand drawn and scanned in well.... I'm not sure I ever real have. gulp. And I gotta say, it was really quite a relief to lay off the pen tool in illustrator for a night. Not to say that I didn't use it altogether (don't go all crazy on me...) but I actually relied on my trusty micron, this after I searched the house for it. I still couldn't help myself from adjusting/smoothing out some points after doing live trace, but for me, it was a big deal. In the end, I like how it turned out. I can't see me changing my ways here, but I can see how it could be pretty handy to do line work, and a whole lot less mind numbing. Hey, baby steps...

Oh, and the interview with Matt Batten, Chief Creative Officer at Wunderman, can be read here

40 days of lettering... day 33

yup. I'm still at it. This piece was from a quote from  a piece over on creative interviews on Michael Sharp, founder of Standard Times. I tried to tap into the idea of a hanging sign, like something that  might be hung on the door of a small business.

40 days of lettering...day 26

New year and another quote for Creative interviews, this time with Mat Zucker, Global Executive Creative Director Razorfish. The interview can be read in its entirety here.  I can certainly agree with this sentiment and can also easily see myself falling into this trap! I have never been an overly decisive person. Take for instance this design. Under a tight timeframe for me (one evening to complete), I initially thought I would keep it simple and stick to black and white. The style of lettering kind of lent itself to this and it seemed like a clean answer. Ultimately though, I couldn't stop myself from throwing in a bit of color to see how I liked it. Although I kind of liked it, in the end, I decided that it was better off with less going on, as well as the thought that the profile didn't read as well in multiple colors. When I started out, I just worked the lettering in the rounded shape, playing off the waviness of "wishy washy." It wasn't until I was nearly done, that it occurred to me that it might be a bit more interesting to add the nose and eye to make it into a profile. Anyone prefer the more colorful version? Ahhhh... the indecisiveness continues ;)

40 days of lettering... day 22!

This weeks's creative interviews feature was with Jim Haven, chief creative officer and founder of the ad agency, Creature, based out of Seattle. This quote was a little longer than I realized at first glance. Although I really like the message, it was not something that leant itself to an obvious image, like some that I have done in the past.  It took a little more thought on my part, to try to adapt the lettering somehow to the overall theme. How do you represent failure as a form of success in contrast to compromise? The word failure itself, brought to mind the fact that it starts with the letter "F," which definitely has a negative school connotation, so I decided to highlight the first letter in regards to a report card. This opened up the possibility of adding a report card image somewhere, in this case, it ended up as a background element. I thought that placing the words as part of steps with failure at the top might reflect a general sense of progression, as a good thing, with failure making it all the way to the top. I squished part of "compromise" to connote its meaning. I would have liked to work in a figure but overall, I'm happy with how it turned out. I think I will try to incorporate more ephemera into these pieces, where I can. I think it adds a nice element to contrast with all the vector.

40 days of lettering...day 21

Today's piece is a quote from Dan Shepelavy, Executive Creative Director of the Brownstein Group, from a feature over at creative interviews. This quote was a little more lengthy than what I am used to, but I took it as a personal challenge to figure out how to make it mesh! My first thought was to make it fit within the overall shape of a curvacious beer can. That actually might have worked, if it wasn't for the fact that "Kardashian" kept falling right where I was putting the beer can's "waistline," i.e. the narrowest part! Anyway, I had more success once I worked the lettering within the context of a standard can. It's an interesting quote, nonetheless and worth the read to get his take on today's advertising world.

40 days of lettering... day 20!

I'm at the halfway point! Ok, so maybe it's been a little over 20 days to get to this point and no doubt, more than another 20 to finish up, but who's counting? ummm, I guess I am, but anyway, it feels good to have gotten this far. 

This was another piece I did for creative interviews from an interview with Daniel Bonner, Global Chief Creative Officer at Razorfish. This was a cool quote to work with in that it instantly conjured up some visuals relating to superheroes and their powers. Initially, I tried to work a cape in here, coming off "super powers," but it just got too big, complicated and generally awkward that I decided to just bag it. I messed around with the line breaks until I got an arrangement that seemed to fit well together and allowed a spot for the fist to come in. Overall, this was a quickie for me in that I finished up in under 2 hours. I was glad I kept it from being too refined and complex. One of my reasons for doing this 40 day project, was to sharpen my skills and speed up my process, so I felt that time-wise at least, this piece was a success.

40 days of lettering, days 18 and 19!

Almost halfway done!! This past week, I fit in 2 more quotes for creative interviews. Andrew McKechnie is the group creative director for DDB NY and Ron Lim is the creative director at ATTIK. The trophy piece was a bit tricky to try to make the type fit in the shape as well as make it look like it wrapped around it somewhat. I enjoyed including a person alongside the lettering. I think that always makes it more interesting. For the other piece, I tried to focus on the "stay the course" portion of the quote. It made me think of a somewhat nautical theme, so I used that as the focus/theme of the piece in terms of the colors and background graphics.

40 days of lettering... days 16 and 17!

I am back on the bandwagon (at least for a day or two) and have 2 more pieces to add to my lettering project as I ever so slowly, creep to the halfway point. 40 days was a crazy idea, and who knows how many in total it will take me to get there, but I am plugging away! In the news department, I am now represented by the nice folks over at Good Illustration. I have been poking around and looking for a rep for some time and their subspecialties of children's illustration and lettering seemed like it might make a nice fit with my work and luckily they agreed to take me on. They also sponsor a site called creative interviews, that feature weekly chats with well known creatives in the advertising and editorial fields. They asked me if I could whip up some type treatments based on quotes from the interviewees as a way to self promote, and I was happy to oblige. I really enjoyed doing the museum piece for Antonio Navas, ECD of Saatchi & Saatchi NZ. It was a nice respite from my usual sugar filled designs and the toned down color and linework gave me some "visual relief" from some of the kids stuff I have been working on lately. The Back to the Future piece from a quote from Rich Greco of the design firm, Droga5, gave me a lot more trouble, for some reason. I really wrested with the type treatment and whether or not to have the television shape or not, and even the colors themselves! In the end, I felt pretty comfortable with it and liked the retro feel to it.