at long last… DAY 40 of 40 DAYS OF LETTERING!

This was one of those projects where maybe I should have made it more like 30 days or even 20. I'm embarrassed to say how long this thing has gone on! And by the end, I felt like the last one should be some sort of momentous grand finale of sorts, making me procrastinate all the more, which was hardly the intent of the whole thing in the first place! Instead, I've just settled for an ending… grand or not. Anyway, I'm glad I did it, but more glad that I finished it (finally….)

day 39 of 40 days of lettering and yet another competition...

I thought I was at the point where I had had enough of these competitions and I really do feel this way. I see little point in entering something where there is a very slim chance of winning, unless of course, you feel like you would be adding something cool to your portfolio. The winning part… not very likely and certainly not worth getting invested in. Soooo, with that in mind, I entered another tiger print comp, hahaha. Well, as you may know, I love Christmas and this contest having the focus on lettering, I thought I'd just do one submission. Besides, I could use it for the second to the last day of my 40 days of lettering thing. Yes, I think I'm just continuing to type on here to convince myself ;)

It was kind of an odd contest for them. They provided around 4 or 5 photographs that you were supposed to choose from and then add your lettering. I decided to take part of a lyric from White Christmas (yeah, I am a Christmas music freak, too). I tweaked the background image, making it bluer and giving it a bit more tone for the white lettering to drop out of. I kept adding more little swashes and flourishes until it looked done. I'm pretty sure they will go for a more calligraphic treatment, but it was a nice exercise, nonetheless.

illustration friday, beard and day 38!

So when I heard that this week's illustration Friday's topic was beard, I thought it sounded like a fun one. aaaannnnd, I thought it could serve as day 38 in my 40 days of lettering project! I was determined not to spend a lot of time on it and more importantly, NOT to do my usual, scan, redraw with the pen tool routine in AI. Too tedious and would have taken way too much time. I figured this kinda lent itself to more of a woodcut, rough look anyway. Broke out the Tombow brush pen I heard so many people rave about and went about my business. I did retrace my initial pencil, in pencil, to get a better idea of spacing and letter widths but I tried not to get too fussy, and this was the result!

happy summer!

In honor of the longest day of the year, I did this little piece that also serves as day 37 of my 40 days of lettering project. My dad was born on this day and was always kinda proud of that little fact, do this one is for him :). I wanted to see if I could do this in under an hour, but I failed...took more like and hour and a half. I spent a little too much time messing with texture and brushes, oh well. But as luck would have it, I just realized that the illustration friday theme of the week is summer, so there ya go!

Hope it is as beautiful wherever you are as it is here in New England today!

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 32

Day 32 is a piece I did for an interview with Kory Kennedy, design director for Entertainment Weekly. You can read the full article here. Evidently, Kory is a big fan of illustration and type, so I couldn't pass up the chance to do something from the article.

I wanted to make a playful piece, and knew that FUN was the key word to play off of in the actual quote. I messed around with some sketches, when I noticed that the serif on the "U" might be able to be transformed into a foot or boot, giving its neighbor, the capital N, a little kick in the pants. That became my starting point. From there, I messed around with some "glyphy" descenders on "typography" until I came up with something I liked. Then came color. Usually, I have a vague idea in my head where I want to go with color and it ends up being my favorite part of making the final. In this case, I was all over the place! I tried all sorts of palettes and even went so far as the little pink number here. I'd like to say I went all the way to crazytown on this one. Sometimes, you have to go there and come back to get your sanity check. I think I was trying too hard to make it fun, and ended up with a circus on my hands! Anyway, I thought better of this color combo, and returned to a red/blue solution, that I thought was probably fun enough, although in looking at the crazytown version, I'd like to use these colors on something, at some point, like maybe something for a circus? ;) Did I make the right decision? What do you think?

40 days of lettering... day 31

Day 31 sprang from an interesting quote from Jean Batthany, of Doyle Dane Bernbach, Chicago for Creative Interviews. You can read the interview in it's entirety here. I'm not up on who the the heavy hitters are in the ad agency world, but I sure know DDB from my graphic design roots. Bill Bernbach effectively revolutionized advertising beginning back in the early 50's with completely non-traditional solutions that became landmark campaigns. If you are a Mad Men fan, (and how could you not be???) DDB is portrayed as one of Sterling Cooper's chief rivals. Watch a clip from the episode where they are all, with the exception of Pete Campbell, disturbed by the DDB approach and discuss the new "Lemon" and "Think small" Volkswagen ads.  

No agency had ever taken a self deprecating, in your face approach to selling a product, let alone an actual car, before. Car ads were slick... this was not. The lemon reference was to the fact that the featured car was not considered sellable due to a scratch on the glove compartment. The ad was disarmingly simple and extremely effective and is widely considered one of the most famous and ground breaking campaigns of all time.

Anyway, I jumped on the chance to tie this back into her quote. What I was most worried about was 1. drawing a realistic car and 2. integrating interesting type into said realistic car. In the end, I was pretty happy with how the car turned out, but the lettering was definitely a struggle basically because I felt like I had to make it kind of curvy to fit in the various car shapes which seemed to go against the spirit of the simplistic clean use of Futura in the actual ad. I must have reworked the lettering 20 times. In the end, I hope it worked well enough. I know I enjoyed reading more about Bernbach's work (he also did the Mikey Life cereal campaign!) and if you are still reading at this point, I hope you enjoyed my little take on the history of advertising! 

day 30 of 40 days of lettering

ok, so my sketches are never pretty, but you get the idea...

Today's piece (number 30...yayyy!!!) was a quote from Pablo del Campo, President and CEO of del Campo Saatchi & Saatchi. You can read the full interview here. I think this one is my favorite of all the quotes I have done for this series, which is funny since when I first read it, I couldn't think of any interesting visuals that I could integrate into the lettering. Somewhere along the way, I thought maybe I could tie in a log rolling idea, alongside a "top of the world" metaphor. Maybe this was a stretch, but I latched onto it because I thought it could be a fun image. I had it all drawn out with the businessman on top of the globe in water, when I started to doubt myself...maybe an actual log rolling lumberjack would be better? Maybe combining log rolling and staying on top of the world was too much for the viewer to get right away? So I drew the bearded fella on top of a giant log and although I liked him, I decided to stick to the skinny suit. In retrospect, the lumberjack looked like a hybrid of Yukon Cornelius (best character in Rudolph...) and Jack Lalanne (remember him?). Ultimately, I hope I made the right decision. This is the kind of question that would have been best answered if I had been working with an AD. I hope Pablo likes it and I hope you do too!

good ole Jack...the original fitness guru

best line in the show after he licks his pick axe..."nothin'"

day 29 of 40 days of lettering

Getting there... almost to turning that to that magical number 30 and can actually start counting down! I'm absolutely positive this phrase has been done by someone out there in starbucks land, but I thought it might make a cute valentine message. Me, I'm more of a straight up "venti bold and give me some room" kind of girl...lattes are just fancy steamed milk and sugar.

Technical question for any of you master bloggers out there...can you tell me why jpegs like this look soooo grayed out when I post them here? I don't get it. They look nothing like the actual file and how it looks on flickr or even crappy Facebook. If you have a sec, check out the difference here...Thoughts? 

40 days of lettering, day 28 and killing 3 birds with one stone

also available in my shop!

This is what you call art multitasking. I hadn't done an Illustration Friday prompt in some time, so I thought maybe I could combine a submission, along with checking off day 28 of my lettering project, as well as come up with a valentine product for over at my society6 ;). Hey, when you work for yourself, this is the kind of crazy assignments you can self concoct. The word for the week at illustration friday, was beginning. More often than not, when I do submit something over there, I do it as lettering. I had kinda missed doing something on the cute lettering side (a departure from some of the quotes I have been doing for creative interviews). Soooo, I came up with this quote which is a bit of a reluctant valentine, one for someone who is on the fence about revealing their true feelings, ha. I think there must be a market for this sentiment, at least with teenagers!

40 days of lettering... day 27

Today's lettering piece was done for an interview with Lincoln Bjorkman, Global Chief Creative Officer, Wunderman. The interview can be read over at creative interviews. As quotes go, this was a really good one, with plenty of visuals that came to mind immediately. The king/queen wordage lent itself to a playing card theme. Kings in card decks, typically have a sword, so replacing that with a paintbrush was a natural fit. 

I am starting to appreciate illustrator's blob brush. So many artists I know really rave about it. I have never used it much... I always thought it was just a little too, well, blobby, lol. But, you can't beat it for easy smooth marks, making it pretty much the complete antithesis of the pen tool. I used it here in some of the detail work, as well as the hair lines. And believe me, at 3:00am when I was trying to finish this baby up, it was a trusted and valued friend. What I don't get (and should really take two seconds to research more) is why it seems to continually change point size as you go along...weird. 

The pic below shows a bit of how I work, sketch-wise. I don't do a lot of tracing over roughs and refining my work. Instead, I tend to make friends with my handy eraser, continually refining and adjusting in my handy sketchbook, until I think it's good enough for a final pencil (on right) that I use to scan and then draw over in illustrator. The queen could have used a bit more styling in her face, but she's upside down anyway, ha. Overall, I was happy with how it turned out for a one day project, anyway ;)

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 ;)

Time for a new year, resolutions and day 25 of the lettering project!

Happy New Year! As I embark on 2014, I have resolved to finish this project...this year! Umm ok, maybe I can do better than that ;) After all, finishing a 40 day project that I started about 3 months ago would be the lamest of all New Years resolutions. Actually, I have never been one for resolutions in the first place. People always seem to make them after Christmas overindulgence, and they tend to pass long before spring. But this year, I have given it some thought, art-wise, and actually have a few things I hopefully am resolved about enough to actually accomplish.

1. Try my hand at using some traditional media. Yup. Back in the day, I actually was fairly capable at picking up a brush. I'd like to try gouache for illustration (which I have never used) as well as good old fashioned ink for lettering. I'm sure I will never abandon my mouse, but to coin the phrase of Lilla Rogers, I think it might "inform" my work, hopefully for the better and give it a more organic feel. Take for example, this piece. I used the pencil tool for a rougher look. It was hard for me not to smooth out those Bézier curves, but I held off. I still look at it and wonder what it might have looked like being done with an actual brush.

2. Now this is a tough one to define....make my work more commercially viable. I suppose every artist tries to do this, but I feel like I need to take a step back and look at my "style" objectively. I feel that I tend to go for pure over the top cuteness, that just isn't as sellable as it could be. Not sure what all this means, but I hope it ultimately translates into making art that actually sells.

3. Make an official website. I had/have one but since it is flash-driven, and super hard to work with, it hasn't been updated in ages. I do have a portfolio site over at carbonmade, but it doesn't give you the bells and whistles that a personalized website does.

4. Work on more collections. This is related to number 2.

That should be enough to keep me busy! What are your resolutions, art or otherwise? I would love to hear! Thanks for following along and all the best for a happy and healthy 2014!

Jill

40 days of lettering...day 24

Quite an number of 40 days have passed since I started this project, but I have not given up! Here is day 24, another piece that I did for Creative Interviews. The quote is by Oscar Stern, Creative Director Art/Broadcast Producer for the Hachette Book Group. Interview can be read here. I had very little time to work on this one. Aside from a quickie thumbnail, a week earlier, I didn't start this until 10:00pm last night! Proud to say, I powered through it without a drop of coffee, but I nearly went to fire up my Verissmo, a few times! The text itself, was pretty visual, which always helps get the ball rolling. Not that you have to have anything other than straight lettering in a piece like this, but I always think it adds a nice touch, if you can. Considering my time constraints, I wanted to keep it simple color-wise, so I decided to throw it on a black background that I could quickly "grunge up" at the last minute (which ended up being around 2:00am).  I could have spent more time working on the leaves and making them more interesting, but at that hour, I was going for speed and simplicity, which for me, meant using the brush tool as opposed to the pen tool in illustrator. Always a relief to use that as opposed to the point making, handle pulling tedium of using illustrator's pen, but hey... it's what I'm used to. All things considered, I was happy with the way it turned out.

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.