Book Jacket Design

This cover was for the Penguin Design Competition, unfortunately wasn't shortlisted but am looking forward to entering again next year. For me this was great fun to produce and design, I went through around 50-100 thumbnails to really eliminate and widdle down my ideas.
My mindset from the beginning was to not be generic, so I spent a lot of time looking at the other contestant's design to limit and stop myself from plagiarising. These limitations forced me to be as creative as possible with the text and lead me down a metaphorical and abstract approach.

Back to the Drawing Board.

Just to expand on my last article, I have created some more drawing. Here I am aiming to think 3 Dimensionally. Where as my usual drawing is in 2D, here I am thinking about the 3D shapes that make the object; in this case my dog Ben.

Already I feel it is much easy and provides much more freedom to make bold marks. First I've drawn the shapes I see that make up the dog, I then work over the top of these shapes. I've found that listening to epic music speed up my hand and stops my brain from over analysing, which can make the drawing suffer. For the mix I listen to you can go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hJ0l64sRJc

Learning to draw again.

I've never been taught to draw so the technique that I have is just things I have picked up from drawing a lot. So I'm going back to basics to be able to 'technically' draw; this means re-learning the proper techniques to draw proportions, negative space etc. In addition to this I have been learning to do this in photoshop. I had a muck about with some shapes a couple minutes ago and made this:

The lines are in blue as to differentiate in the later stage of painting between the linework and the painting at hand. Its a bit of fun and am looking forward to doing more.

Busy day..

I'm almost there with the logo design. Here is the latest iteration of it. It could be lacking colour but it looks as if I have solved the recognisability of the pencil by adding a slant to it. This is the most appropriate association for this logo, otherwise it would have been school pencil yellow, which D&AD sport on their logo. Although a splash of some colour would be nice, tone down the corperate feel to the design.

Final thoughts: The typography has a more intimate relationship with the image which I think brings the idea of Howdon and illustration being closely linked. I wonder if I should pop in some 'go faster' lines to give the viewer the sense of a speedy business, such is the illustration and graphic design world.

After Review...

Thought I'd get back to this now rather than later. Changes: Larger lead - making the 'H' the body of the pencil instead of the negative space in it, the 'i' is still less obvious but am happy. Use of squiggly line (A) and perspective pencil mark (B) help guide the viewers eye.

If you've seen this already try and image you haven't and that you don't know its a pencil... 

(A)

(B)

A day of Graphics and forgetfulness...

Today's been interesting, after collating holiday 'things to do in Corfu' information together into postcards I realised I've hand a bit of graphics withdrawal which led me to making an illustration website layout and trading logo's. 

Website Layout.

White?

Or Black?

I'm happy with the logo itself as it included everything I set out to do; combine an 'H' with the negative space of the pencil leaving an 'i' to be visible. An the other hand, I feel I need to change the typography; not by much, just is lacking in something... 

Just also thought of adding a graphite streak leading the eye to the pencil, the roughness of the graphic texture might balance out the image a bit. 

Suppose it's time to eat lunch.. 

Houdini Poster

Having a background in magic, making posters was inevitable. I've wanted to make some for a long time, although this is just a rough, its a good starting point. I want to portray the magician, their style of performing and the time they lived in each poster. I chose a graphic novel style approach to the illustration in this poster because a) its a callback to my roots and b) I think of Houdini as super hero of his time.