Naturally with Christmas time come some fun holiday projects. I had the opportunity to work on some fun custom lettering for a Christmas event. I thought I would show some snippets of the lettering process. This was actually a pro bono project I did that I was happy to help out with. With that said, I was given the project to complete quickly, and while trying to squeeze in around other paid project on my plate!

I had a specific tall curly font style in mind but was not able to find what i was looking for within “budget” or time. This is a good example of where custom lettering comes to the rescue! I can usually come up with a custom lettering treatment faster than it takes me to perform that agonizing search. I have the freedom to get as specific to the creative need as possible! These are some of the great advantages not mentioning the lack of worry on right of usage.
 
 
Here are the somewhat refined rough sketches. I say that because they are kind of in the middle. Usually I like to go a few steps further with line refinement in paper but with the crunch in time I chose to refine from here in Illustrator
 
 
Tweaking the raw vector lines
 
 
In this case, (again with the quick turn around) I created a custom brush in illustrator to apply and manipulate on the vector lines of each letter. These turned out pretty well with some cleaning up on some corners and twists. Brushes are a great quick way to achieve a certain looking you are going after if you know how to work with them right. If I had all the time in the world, I would naturally prefer to control every twist turn and curve of this ribbon effect by hand.
 
 
Lastly, I Expanded my brush strokes when I cleaned them up and then exported the piece into Photoshop for the subtle shadow effect on the overlapping of the ribbon lettering. Wala!
 
 
I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas!
 

Originality is a term that is used often in the design world, whether in a request from a client or a promise of a designer. It is a desired quality for many obvious reasons. I mean, no one wants to be a copy cat, or at least I would hope so, right!?

One thing that can be noted about originality is how seemingly difficult it can be to find. That is because of the challenges, hard work, research, and skill it takes to develop something decently original. Some designers just don’t have the passion or motivation to go the extra mile in creating original work, OR, are simply satisfied with producing unoriginal rip off work. We see it everywhere. There are HUNDREDS of cheap logo design companies springing up online, you find more and more companies ripping off logo designs created by others. Plagiarism is a real problem. It is sad, and what is even more discerning is that clients with valuable business plans are settling for this poor attempt at design to represent their hard work and ideas. It’s a classic example of you get what you pay for.
These cheap logo design companies are treating logo design like a fast food drive through. Quick, cheap, and unoriginal. To a client that doesn’t know any better it might taste good and be at the right price now, but it’s not healthy in the long run because it is lacking those key ingredients that make up quality and originality. (careful research, consideration, and skill.)
Then there is always the debatable subject of how possible is 100% originality. Originality does bring up a lot of questions especially when you think of the thousands of years of art and design that has been created throughout the world. It makes it seem like anything you design is bound to have some kind of similarity to something else. This is another example of the importance in careful research but are some similarities all that bad? I say no of course not as long as you don’t cross a line and really I am only scratching the surface of this subject. Yes you will have occasions where work is evolved, or inspired by something else. Some of the best work I have seen has been inspired from something else but has it’s own original twist and is strong and beautiful. There is nothing wrong with this if it is approached well. Ask any great artist/designer and they will quickly tell you who they are inspired by, but when you look at their work you will see they are not ripping off anyone, they just allowed the artist that inspire them open their creative minds to create new and original work. There is a line and when it has crossed over to rip off, it is very apparent.

If you are looking for a logo for your business my advice to you is to strive for original. Don’t settle for a cookie cutter logo that is not considerate to anything about your business, and most certainly don’g allow rip offs. As I stated in a previous blog Logo design 101, your logo is your first impression, it needs to represent, and stand above. Don’t let this foundational starting point of your branding be quick, cheap and easy like fast food drive through. Originality is not just a side order so find a designer who will go the extra mile. There is so much involved that holds true value in quality logo design.

You can find inspiration in a diverse range of things from nature to objects. I keep my eyes open soaking in all the little details of things that I find inspiring. I find huge inspiration for looking at old objects and antiques. When I found out that my neighbor “Crazy Ed” was a huge collector of radios I was very intrigued. Crazy Ed’s Radio Emporium is what he calls his radio hobby/business. Ed is a retired engineer and saying he has a collection is a huge understatement. His house is filled to the brim with mostly radios but other objects like record, clocks, old light bulbs and even a turn of the century Edison Phonograph. Some of these radios are as old as late 1800s.

When I got the first tour of Ed’s collection I wished more than anything I had my camera with me and thankfully he was nice enough to let me come back another day and take a few pictures. I really got pumped looking at all the details of these radios. The knobs, carvings, embellishments, ornate graphics, the list goes on. Observing the art found in these radios can give you great inspiration for your next design piece. From the curves and flourishes of the old fashion turn of the century style radios to the art deco style radios from the 30s. There is such beautiful line work in these radios and the craftsmanship is mind blowing. What quality. I am not only inspired by these radio because of their aesthetic appearance but also by what they did and still do. Radios are, and especially back then, were a huge deal. I can look at these a radios and almost start to hear sound coming out of them as I think of the time frame they are from. My mind goes nuts thinking of all the music they have played, the history they have reported, where they have been, and who listened to them. My curiosity gets the best of me as I imagine this stuff. It is like a fairy tale but then I realize it is real. If these radios could have recorded what came through them in their life time and be played now, it would be incredible.

When I first met Ed and he shared with me about his unique interest and collection, I quickly learned he shared this interest with a decent sized group of men making it not as unique as I thought. Every Wednesday evening our street is filled with cars because Ed is having his weekly Radio meeting. He and his buddies get together every week to talk, share, swap, and work on their Radio collections. What a great hobby and great collection full of inspiration.

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.

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