In Digital Typography, our final project was to create a two-page spread, a poster, an ad, and a web banner. This is my ad, peddling an expansion for the board game Settlers of Catan. I took the image of the game and the body copy from the back of the box, but I reproduced all the other elements myself. I was particularly proud of this piece; it looks just like something that Mayfair Games themselves would publish.
This one popped into my head as I was falling asleep one night. I thought it was amusing, but when I presented it to the class, everyone seemed to think it was meant to be serious.
A two-page spread for my Digital Typography class. The photos and body copy are credited in the image, though I don’t recall off the top of my head where they originally came from. The headline typeface is Belwe, a readable but idiosyncratic Celtic-style font.
Two page spread
One more from Graphic Symbolism. Our first project was to develop a logo for another member of the class. This one is for Molly Beth McAdams. She had been toying with using the first two letters of her first and middle names as a company name. She’s a playful, casual kind of person, so I added the tagline “More Better.” Not only is it a fun little phrase, it’s also a promise: Molly will deliver more, and it will be better than the competition. I built the font myself in Illustrator. Since I wasn’t getting graded for that, though, it contains only the glyphs you see here. Building an entire font is a lot of work.
MoBe: More. Better.
A logo for the 101 Asian Fusion Grill in the Cherry Creek neighborhood of Denver. I’ve never eaten there, but I looked at their website, and their current logo is plain awful. This one uses a simple chinese decorative element and a simple, elegant typeface called Maiandra. The numerals come from a different font that I can’t identify since its name is in Japanese kanji.
Logo for the 101 Asian Fusion Grill restaurant
So part of the curriculum is a class called “Graphic Symbolism.” To me, that implies learning how images communicate ideas, and how to use that to say something without having to outright say it. Like the red objects in the Sixth Sense, always present whenever there’s a clue about what’s really going on. Red being the color both of blood (and thus death) and of the supernatural. Instead, it was a logo design class. It was a really good logo design class, but that still didn’t make it terribly relevant for a visual effects student.
Anyway, one of the assignments was a set of related logos for a beverage company. Most of my classmates naturally designed booze logos. Here are four logos based on famous Ukiyo-e woodcuts by Hiroshige and Hokusai, and one based on an image imitating the Ukiyo-e style by another acquaintence from the Cartographers’ Guild, Michael Tumey, aka GamerPrinter. Incidentally, he runs a printshop servicing roleplaying gamers, so if you ever need a map printed and/or laminated, look him up at http://www.gamer-printshop.com. The prices are reasonable, the prints are superb, and the lamination is adequate.
Back to the point. Hibiki-An is a real company, but these aren’t their actual products. They are actual traditional Japanese teas, though.
A set of matched logos for an importer of Japanese teas.
And in case you’re wondering, the tea used for the tea ceremony is matcha.
Yet another environmental drawing from Perspective & Proportion. For this one, the assignment was to illustrate a particular period in history using the architecture as the primary clue about what time period the image describes. I wasn’t terribly happy with the characters in this one, but I very much enjoyed drawing the mosque. The minarets and domes of Islamic architecture are so beautiful. It was a delight just to look at the reference photos.
Pencil on cold-press illustration board.
An Arabian City during the Crusades
Another Perspective and Proportion project. We were to illustrate a castle with strict perspective. This image is based on a photograph of Karlsborg Fortress in… Sweden, I think it was. I am not sure what part of the fortress the photograph shows. I suspect it’s looking down the exterior of the Eastern Land Front wall at the corner tower, but I can’t be certain.
The image is intended to accompany a map created by an acquantaince of mine with the screenname Hoel on the Cartographers’ Guild. The map can be viewed here.
This one is all graphite pencils on cold-press illustration board.
Karlsborg Fastning
Another project for Perspective & Proportion. The assignment was to illustrate an offworld environment—something that was obviously not of Earth, whether fantasy or science-fiction. I have been exploring some steampunk motifs recently, and steampunk always seems to go hand-in-hand with airships. So I imagined these enormous towers where the airships could dock without having to get close to the ground.
Pencil sketch inked over with a fine sharpie and finished with grey Prismacolors and a little bit of white Prismacolor pencil to bring some highlights back into it.
A Fantasy Environment with Airships
The airships are the same design that I made for my Digital Illustration class, minus the fishing net apparatus:
The original airship design image
This was the first project in my Perspective & Proportions class. We were to demonstrate our understanding of overlapping perspective and diminution (things that are farther away appear to be smaller) by drawing “The Thundering Hordes of…” We saw everything from bunny rabbits to severed heads, to butcher knife-wielding bridesmaids. So here is my tribute to decades of musical cinema. I wanted to shoehorn in Arnold Schwarzeneggar and Jamie Lee Curtis doing their tango from True Lies, but I had a hard time making a good, recognizable drawing of them, so I substituted some random nameless people in their stead. I rather regret having done that now.
Sharpie and grey Prismacolor markers on cold-press illustration board. Maybe some day I’ll do a Photoshop recolor on it—red velvet curtains would look great.
The Thundering Hordes of Hollywood Dancers
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