Dog in a Fight color comps

Preliminary color comp versions of the wall poster with off registration colors and scratchy surface texture. 

It's Not Size of the Dog in a Fight

Bold freehand lettering with plenty of contrasting shapes.  This piece was very complicated to finish with almost a year of reworking the composition. Though the lettering looks random, it took many pencil sketches to figure out placement of the words.

My Social Brand Logo Development

Earlier this year I worked on a logo project for My Social Brand.

http://www.my-social-brand.com/

What made this a challenging logo to produce was the client request that each word be surrounded by interlocking talk bubbles. After a concept sketch was selected for vector I did some additional sketching to figure out  the rough shape and position of the individual letters. The sketch was imported to Illustrator to use as a reference guide. I had to make numerous adjustments during the vector drawing process as the logo was going to used for repro from small to large sizes. I quite often view the logo in reverse to avoid any odd contrast.

Fireworks Courtesy of Nature

Ellis Brown

Ellis Brown was script logo project with retro influence. I looked at some 50's and 60's style lettering for reference and  drew a series of roughs for presentation. This was one of those "need it yesterday" commercial lettering projects with not much time to produce the sketches or vector lettering.

The client selected the bottom version with the request that both words be centered. A quick Photoshop modification was  applied to the  selected rough on the bottom right.

The modified sketch image was used as a template in Illustrator. The template was only a starting point to provide reference for the basic shape of the letters. 

Tejas Logo Development

Tejas is a recent lettering project. A good example of sketching and contrast development.  In my younger days I learned from a master designer that one of the key elements of lettering is black and white contrast. To this day I often work in reverse with white letters on a black background. I use this method to fine tune the overall contrast by closing gaps.

The client sent me a rough draft of Texas which had some problems. The contrast was off balance with thicks of the e, a and s which overpowered the vertical weight of the j and a. There was nothing unique in the cap T or j.  

The only way to properly develop Tejas was to spend time rough sketching. Sketching is the ultimate skill to find answers for what may  or may not work. After some time with pencil and paper I  developed the circled version which definitely had some potential for vector lettering. The client select 2 versions to refine in vector format.

  

More Pencils from the Archives

The Black Seeds logo was another commercial project requiring tight pencils. The objective was to begin with the original logo and refine the lettering. This was not a project with freedom to stray from the original design. The client sent the original logo and a rough layout to use as a starting point.

A series of tight pencils was produced and the client selected the version to develop as a finished vector logo.

The Black Seeds logo was drawn in vector and printed as an insert for the Dust and Dirt CD.

Tight Pencil Layouts

While archiving some files I found pencil layouts from a commercial project. This was for bottled water with emphasis on the word NOTHING.

Unlike preliminary sketches for a personal gestural lettering piece, commercial projects start with loose thumbnails that sometimes evolve into very tight pencil renderings. When drawing a tight layout with mechanical pencil and marker I use tissue overlays that are scanned as a multiple layer Photoshop image. The layers get flattened and posterized for presentation.

Lettering Sketch for Word Far Away

This is the original sketch for the World Far Away composition. I was thinking about deadlines with commercial lettering. My garden has no deadlines to deal with.

I rough sketched the composition and refined the lettering on a overlay. The overlay was scanned and used as a template. The background image was painted in Photoshop and changed a number of times with modified layers as I wanted the word "deadlines" to overlap the garden path.

Besides the garden composition changing the lettering changed as well. The finished lettering is similar to the overlay with many refinements. As with most of my gestural script I constantly change and reshape letters while working. If I was doing this on canvas the process would be the same.

Commercial Lettering Example

I occasionally get e-mail inquiries from people who want to be lettering artists. I often mention in my reply that sketching is the way to find answers. Nothing happens magically. There is no computer software package that  spits out automatic thumbnail drawings. It all happens with a pencil and paper.

The following images are good examples  of what commercial lettering is. This project was for the redesign of the Black Label logo which involved preliminary sketching and vector lettering comps with many tweaks all due under a very short deadline schedule. No type fonts were used to create the lettering. Everything was drawn by hand in both pencil and vector formats. While this project was happening I also dealt with several other deadlines using the same sketch, draw and refine process. Sketching is always the starting point of any commercial lettering project. 

Preliminary sketches sent the client.

A mix of the vector comp lettering with alternate caps, letter shapes and embellishments.

A World Far Away From Deadlines

Gardens have nothing to do with deadlines.