I just finished up a new custom lettered logo for the Western Ohio Epilepsy Foundation. Every year in the summer they hold a huge mud volleyball tournament and every two years they change the theme of the event. For 2010-11 the new theme will be a fun one, “Muddy Gras”!




I had a lot of freedom on this one and with the main theme being mud there was tons of fun to be had! This kind of free for all crazy lettering is my favorite to do.

I find it easy to be passionate about projecst like this. It is for a good cause, has a fun theme, and really… how much more fun can you ask for in designing a logo for an event where people are playing some sloppy muddy volleyball on a scorching Ohio summer day!

I recently had the great experience of doing some lettering on the fly while being filmed. What a trip! I was working with two of my great new co workers Brian Ward and Andy Nick as they put together an animated piece for the brand spanking new Real Art Real Mart! I am now working at Real Art in the interactive department getting my creative on with a great group of creatives.

During my first week I was asked to execute this lettering on glass over a green screen with a sharpie, while being filmed. The lettering was pre designed by Real Art’s Mary. Ill have to say it was quite awkward. We worked to figure out the position that worked for not only the filming but my comfort so that I could draw this funky lettering piece. It took a few takes and they also filmed me stamping, and sliding other elements into the scene. It was a blast! Very much the first time I have ever done anything quite like that.

Here is a great blog post by Brian Ward Explaining the Process in much greater detail.

Here is the finished piece that is right now displayed on Real Art’s home page promoting Real Mart. Real Mart is an online store where you can purchase a collection of great creative items custom made my Real Art employees. I am super excited to get some products up myself. Check out Real Mart now!

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!
 

Recently I was approached by a wedding business in Cincinnati. I was excited to learn that they are a one of a kind business that knows of the value in having a professionally designed identity and branding system for their business. Wedd head specializes in on site wedding hair and makeup. They send our professional stylists directly to their clients so that they can avoid the hectic runaround of appointments, and focus on having a stress free wedding day from start to finish. What better way to enjoy feeling beautiful with your girls before your wedding!


I was so excited to have the opportunity to design a logo for such a great business with a neat and unique name.
 The Wedd Head team were very thorough in completing my brief so that I could learn of all the important aspects of Wedd Head in order to develop a custom logo that will help keep them ahead of the game. As usual in my process I always present multiple version initially to work towards finding the right direction that works best and also pleases them.
 

While there are no other businesses in the Cincinnati area offering this specific service they knew they needed to establish a brand that will stand out against any competition they might face. You would be surprised on how many great businesses fail to see this importance.

Below is the final version that was chosen. Wedd Head let me know they wanted something that was elegant yet slightly edgy. the “Wedd” text of the logo is custom lettered and designed to represent flowing beauty and shine. the flowing portions of the W and D resemble flowing curls with sparkles of beauty. I anchored it down with the HEAD text treatment in a styled bar for that ridged balance.
 

 

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