Well I would say a lot! I will indulge you with an explanation. “Thumbnails”, or more specifically “Thumbnail sketches”, are one of those seemingly small things that play a big roll. First off lets cover what they are. Thumbnail sketches are semi appropriately named so because they are a series of SMALL sketches. While some of them may not be literally the size of one’s thumbnail, they still stay decently small. There are usually many and they are done quickly. What is their purpose you ask? Well lets delve deeper shall we?

Thumbnail sketching is a very important step in the design process. It is part of what I call the discovery process. It’s a way of dumping out all of your ideas for the layout or design of a particular project out of your brain and onto paper. With these quick sketches you don’t worry too much about detail, they are very rough. The quicker the better so you can focus more on the general idea rather than the fine details yet. For me it is the second step in my process. My first step is always getting a good brief and research of the project and or subject matter of which I am designing for. I then use that the fuel my thumbnails!

The neat thing about thumbnails is how they influence each other and start a snowball effect of ideas. You might draw one sketch that inspires another idea, then another, then yet another. I try to force myself to at least do 100-150 thumbnails. It seems like a lot but it pays. I will always hit a point early where I FEEL like I have enough good ideas but when you push further even BETTER ideas are ready to be found.

There is such freedom in this process. With these little guys you are not worrying about fine details, just go with it. You don’t worry about how stupid or great an idea seems to be. Thumbnails bring out possibilities that you didn’t even know where there until you just went for it. Whatever comes to your brain needs to be given a chance at this stage.

Sometimes inspiration for a thumbnail or two will come to you just about anywhere and that is ok! All you need is something to sketch it onto. You will find that some of my thumbnails are sketched out on a restaurant napkin or notebook paper.

After I feel I have sketched out enough ideas, I use the thumbnails to choose the best options and off I go to the refinement stage. As I have mentioned before I refine quite a bit on paper before even getting into the computer. Once those usually 3-4 options are refined on paper they are then refined more and finalized in the computer.
When I am all finished with a project I always hang on to all the sketches I did and bind them together so that I can look back and see my visual thought process for that particular project. It is great to see how things evolve.

Never underestimate the power of a thumbnail sketch.

Looking for a great 45 min workout? How about an intense game of squash! I consider myself to be quite the athletic gal with a decent knowledge about most athletics, but squash is a sport I knew nothing about. This changed very quickly. Learning about squash was of course one of the important steps in completing this logo design project for the Dayton Squash Center and I have to tell you I am starting to fall in love. Its not only a great 45 min workout, but a lot of fun.

I was approached by a gentleman by the name of Charlie who was looking to update the Dayton Squash Center logo. With a new physical sign being built and new website under construction, they were ready for a new mark. After a tour of the facility, research, and plenty of sketching, below you will see a later portion of my progress (some what refined sketches, concepts presented, then final version).

As you can see the final version has elements from more than one of the concepts presented. This final version was brought together after the clients gave feedback on their likes of various aspects of the different concepts. This is something that will happen from time to time (where the client will have me mold together liked elements from the multiple concepts) but when it does I approach it with caution. Where it seems nice that the client can take the concepts and have me mold together all of their likes, I make sure that in doing so it will not hinder the purpose of the mark . I try to let the client know that just because they like the various elements does not mean they will come together to make a good logo. More is NOT always better! In this case with the Dayton Squash Center logo things did come together nicely with them also heeding my advise in not have me squeeze in every single element they listed. They were fabulous to work with!

On a side note, Charlie has graciously invited me to attend a weekly squash clinic where I have been learning this great game and getting a nice workout. If you live in the Dayton area you should check it out! I will post the new website when it is up and running soon.

As you may have caught on to by now, custom lettering is one of my specializations and passions. I love type and script treatments and coming up with new forms for clients logos and graphics. Designing complete custom lettering is a very involved process but extremely fun.
To share my lettering process I will start with a brief on this project for a yummy homemade chocolate shop in the small town of Owosso Michigan. The lettering need was brought to me by FORGE here in Dayton Ohio. Spagnuolo’s an Italian Chocolate Shop, needed a fresh and more professional look. I was told a script was desired, something modern but not to elegant with a slight retro and home style feel. I of course started with my brainstorming process, taking in everything about Spagnuolo’s and the chocolate goodies they offer. I considered many ideas but I was very inspired when thinking about the process of making the chocolates. I couldn’t get drizzled chocolate out of my head. What if the script for their name was written in drizzled Chocolate! Off I went…

Here I am showing just a few of many thumbnails I sketched out as well as where I started refining some chosen script treatments. It is all about refinement. I start with thumbnail and refine, refine, refine. Refining involves pencil, erasing, redrawing, reworking, and even cutting/ripping off other pieces of paper and making patchwork until each letter is right.

Here I am really honing in on the chosen script on paper still. I stay with pencil and paper as much as possible. My goal is that by the time a reach the computer I am simply building an already well defined piece. Naturally some refinement is done in the computer as well but I find the more I refine on paper the better! In my opinion a design should never start in the computer, but simply be built/finalized.

Building the line work in Illustrator and like I mentioned making some slight refinements.

Here is one of the final versions where I took the new script that was finalized in Illustrator, and used Photoshop to make it look like real drizzled chocolate script. Ta da!

This is just one of many lettering projects I have completed and I hope to share more in the near future! Thanks to FORGE for having me work on such a great project. Oh! and if you would like to order some yummy Spagnuolo’s Chocolates visit their site at spagschocolates.com

I have, this fall semester, the exciting opportunity of becoming part-time/adjunct faculty at the University of Dayton’s Department of Visual Arts. For one class, two afternoons a week, I will be teaching a Computer applications-design class. I am very excited and a bit nervous at the same time. It’s my first time teaching, and at a college no less. This ‘fear’ is to be expected right? I do have a bit of experience in teaching a few lessons here and there, to teenagers in a youth group for which I volunteer, but this will be new to me.

I do believe talking and working with my youth group kids has given me decent experience talking in front of people, maybe even toughened my skin a bit, seeing as how—well, you know how teenagers can be! I trust that college students are bit more focused. Lets hope I’m right!

All jitterbugs aside I am very excited to be teaching about four of my industry’s design programs of which I’m very passionate. In this class I will be covering the basics and essentials of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and just a touch of Dreamweaver.

I have already started to go over my lesson plan/structure, and can tell you right now I have to continually remind myself about keeping it to basics. There is just SO MUCH! I wish I had time to share it all with them.

Those of us who know these programs are probably already raising an eyebrow, or both, at the idea of covering the four of these programs in one class/semester. I will definitely be sticking to the basics, but know I’ll find time to share a trick or two along the way. My goal is to give them a good foundation on the interface, tools and palettes, along with decent knowledge of select essential features for each program.

Classes start August 26th. Wish me luck!

This summer I have been super busy busting out some great logo design projects. I hope to share them all soon and this particular project I have been very stoked to post about. I was approached by Bah-Pna Dahane, owner of BP Consulting Limited, to design three different logos for three different Angola professional basketball players. For those of you that don’t know I am quite the sports nut with a special heart for hoops, so this was a complete thrill. I had a great time learning about each of the players while designing logos that best suit them. Here is the logos and a little bio of each player.

Eduardo Mingas:

Professional basketball power forward from Angola. 6’7″ 235 lbs. in weight and has represented the Angola national basketball team at the 2002 World Championship, 2004 Summer Olympics and the 2006 World Championships.
An initials logo type with “EM” and 15 incorporated, was designed for Eduardo. I custom lettered these initials in a thick modern style with subtle ornaments that gave the mark an action/motion feel.

Carlos Morais:

Professional Angolan basketball shooting guard. 6’3″ 200lbs. He represented Angola at FIBA Africa Championship 2005, 2006 FIBA World Championships, FIBA Africa Championship 2007. and the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics.
Carlos M. was interested in seeing a “logoman” mark developed so that is exactly what I did. I designed a stylized silhouette that portrays him in the middle of a cross over, and highlights some of his key features.

Carlos Almeida:

Angolan professional basketball shooting guard with Clube Desportivo Primeiro de Agosto and a member of the Angola national basketball team. Standing 6’4″, 200 lbs. Almeida played for Angola at the 2000, 2004 and the 2008 Summer Olympics, the 2002 and 2006 basketball world championship as well as the 2005 and 2007 Africa championships.
Carlos Almeida was also interested in a logoman that portrayed him dominating the key in a defense position. I worked the perspective and integrated the hoop into the text.