The Tattoo Logo

Some logo projects require a lot of sketching. With commercial lettering, a concept no matter how beautiful may not be what the client has in mind.  With this project the first series of development sketches I sent got canned with the client requesting a logo be developed with 3D appearance based on his sketch. That logo did not fly either as the client changed direction. However the importance of a connecting ligature  with the cap and the double lowercase case t was emphasized.

More sketches were developed based on another client sketch. Eventually one was selected to pursue for final art which turned out to be quite a beautiful logo design. There is always more to the process than just drawing or creating vector lettering as the goal is to deliver a visual solution that fulfills a clients needs. That is life in the commercial lettering world.

This version was developed with the clients request to create a logo similar to his sketch with a 3D effect. After review it was canned with a request for further development with a connecting ligature.

At this stage of the project another client sketch was sent for input to further development. The final series of sketches were drawn, sent for review with the 2nd from top selected as the version to produce for final art.

Life Outside of Lettering

There is more to life than creating letters and dealing with deadlines. Whenever I have free time available I am outside in the garden. The season is just now beginning and the colors of the garden will continue to multiply with warmer weather and longer days.

Organic Valley Lettering

I often refer to the grocery store as the  Lettering Art Gallery of Print Reproduction. A morning visit lead to a wonderful find in the dairy section. My lettering for Organic Valley is now in print on the milk packaging. In addition to this back panel lettering I also created the current Organic Valley lettering for the logo. This was 3 month project in the last quarter of 2012.

With this project I was sent a rough typeset file from the creative director with notes suggesting style reference.  I drew some quick studies with a ballpoint pen, scanned the sketches, posterized the images and exported to Illustrator for use as template layers. This is a excellent example to show what a lot of commercial lettering involves.

I prefer to not use type fonts when creating custom lettering but I had to follow the creative directors request for 9 words set in Tisa Pro. All the rest is hand lettered from scratch based on  the rough sketches. The word Delicious involved a bit of time to figure out an appropriate script style to fit in with serif letters of the overall design.

Variations of Medley Crunch

While drinking my morning cup of coffee and watching the local news a commercial for Medley Crunch appeared. You know you have made it to the big time of lettering when you see your lettering in a commercial. What a pleasant surprise!

Medley Crunch is a lettering project from August, 2012. The images posted show the preliminary versions created with variations. I have always believed that variations are a fundamental element to develop custom lettering. With every project I have worked on be it commercial or personal there is always a search to find what may or may not work for letterform shapes. Minor changes to a letterform can make a huge difference for print reproduction. Some projects offer time to develop variations and others happen under rush deadlines. It's the nature of the lettering biz and no matter the time allowed variations will always be an important step of the process.

A Taste You Won't Bee-lieve is not set type. The letters were drawn from scratch to match the selected Medley Crunch style. The variations with curves and hooks of the letter are what made the lettering unique and ownable.

Another Concept Canned

The first in a series of lettering treatments for the Another Concept Canned organization.

Tom & Susie

Tom & Suzie is a beautiful little piece I did for a couple I had to fortune to meet early in my career. This started with a very quick marker sketch and continued with the same flow while drawing with bezier curves.

Quick Lettering with a Dream Marker

I recently began using a Chartpak marker for some quick lettering marker sketches. I never knew this marker existed until a recent trip to the art supply store. Back in the 80's I was using Desgn Art Markers which no longer exist. Those markers had a incredibly stiff flex nib which allowed for super fine lines to thick and heavy strokes. For many years I have been looking for a replacement marker with the same nib quality. Almost every marker I have tried since had nibs that lost the fine point after several hours of lettering.

What I find amazing with the Chartpak marker nib is I cannot ruin the tip no matter how hard I press into the surface of the paper. I can lightly float the nib on the surface for a thin line or press it down to bleed and heavy up the stroke. Instead of doing a quick sketch many times over I can now get the sketch down within the first or second attempt. No need to rework the strokes in overlays as I am getting what I want with the pressure applied with the marker nib. It's a very fresh method without overworking a sketch and loosing the initial rhythm.

When I scan the sketch all the visual information is there for a vector template. No need to guess where to put the lines or thicks and thins. A more direct approach to create vector lettering. This is turning out to be a wonderful life and lettering experience.