Category: Hand Drawn
The Sintaro Project
I figure it has been long enough since it has been completed, that I probably should take a break from working on things and post about this incredible opportunity I was presented with a few months back.
Many of you who land here probably know what tumblr is, and if you don’t, you have probably heard of it either because of the recent purchase by Yahoo! or just in overhearing conversations of this ever-present almost not so secret society of young people. Its considered a micro-blog, nestled somewhere softly between WordPress and Twitter. Initially I joined because I was in need of somewhere to keep my inspiration, without people mistaking my inspiration for something I had created. Essentially its a giant twitter, except you mostly reblog things you find aesthetically pleasing, enamoring, or hilarious. My personal tumblr is a giant combination of sarcasm and aesthetically pleasing things.
Anyways, back to the point. On tumblr, you follow other blogs, and the things that they reblog end up on your dashboard – much like a Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Its an ingenious concept, and if you dont mind your credits being cut off by 14 year old children trying to have a no words blog because they suck, it’s a great place to share your work. Very rarely do I post things to tumblr that I have put a lot of time into creating except by way of Instagram, or Flickr if it is photography.
I cant even put a guess on exactly when I started following my dear Devan, however I do know it was over a year ago and started with a photo of classy pipes, and pipe tobacco. His blog was visually incredibly pleasing and I quickly hit the follow button. Through conversation we had said things about collaborating on logos, business identities, tattoos, just beautiful things that his mind came up with and my mind could put down on paper. As most internet friendships these days go, we started following each other on other social networking outlets such as Instagram and Facebook. Not too long after we finally became Facebook friends, I got this ridiculously long message describing this idea he had to help support a ministry in his church, signed off with,
So I’m asking humbly as one brother in Christ to his sister in Christ. Would you be willing to help me?
I was floored. I was so absolutely incredibly excited, overwhelmed, and simply – floored. Simply put, my response was literally “YES YES A THOUSAND TIMES YES!”
What was the project? The Sintaro Project is without a doubt an inspiring project. Community Presbyterian Church in Danville California set out in 2012 to support a village in Ethiopia for seven years, providing clean water and other necessities to the people in Sintaro.
The task at hand was to combine my design skill set, and Devan’s passion for coffee, and come up with a brand/label for some cold brew Ethiopian coffee that would be sold at his church, and eventually at markets around the area – with the proceeds going to fund this project.
The basic needs were as follows,
- Black & Gold
- Oval/Neck
- Flourishes
- “Ethiopian Coffee”
- 12 oz
- “Hand Crafted”
- “Good By: __”
- “Every Drop Gives Back”
- Ingredients: Coffee & Water
- Keep Refrigerated
Here is one of the initial sketches (yes, sketches, on paper, and scanned in):
For those of you who laughed at your professors who said over and over again to keep a sketchbook…and sketch…and do a lot of the same thing? Yeah.. this is why. I took to old school dip pen and ink, to get a loose, varied feel for every letter. Sometimes you just have to put the computer away and spend time with pen and paper.
After scanning, and deliberating (ironically I used my wacom tablet to cross out words and letters I thought were ugly, and not to actually write them out.) I came to the decision of these,
The process continued, here’s a short video of various different aspects of the in-computer work that was done.
Once all of the coffee was finished brewing, once the labels were stuck, one skype chat and some late night steak later, we have a finished product. (pictured here is the initial design/layout)
Here is the absolute final product with updated swooshies and florals.
I am beyond thankful for the opportunity, and that these bottles sell out nearly every time he pulls them out. I’m looking forward to getting some of these in the mail and shooting them for my portfolio.
You can find out more about this project on Instagram @sintarocoldbrew
(Photos Credit to Devan on Instagram)
Process images from last week,
So I’ve been working on a logo for my portfolio, in reality I have been trying to kill two birds with one stone because the name sake of this logo inquired about me doing his logo a few weeks ago, and I figured I would work on it so I have less to do when he gets the money together. (his wedding comes first i guess, pshhh haha jk)
My goal with this, for whatever reason really, was for a neon feel – I have other versions of this type of logo sketched up, but this one was my favorite. The neon kind of made it retro feeling, at least to me, its entirely possible I’ve done lost my mind.
First step after sketching was to get it roughed out in Illustrator – the key for me doing the lettering is knowing how to work the pen tool – there are a few good tutorials and walk throughs that show you how to use it to the best of your ability, I have never personally used them – simply because of lack of time, however I’m sure they would help me quite a bit if I just set aside time for them.
As you can tell I essentially just laid out where everything important is – much like my sketch. A large part of my process is printing out these, and marking them with a red or blue Micron pens and noting each mark. I also save every version, and on the print out I make sure to put the date and time of the print out so I know which order they go in, and which is the newest edit of all of them.
This next one, I place the type that I feel works best with the rest of the image – sometimes I find this typeface right away, sometimes it takes me typing out the word in like 18 different type faces and going at it with a sharpie, either way, I tend to figure that out relatively quickly.
The typeface I chose is called Learning Curve Pro, its an all caps typeface, but I love it a lot. You can tell with this next edit, I smoothed a lot of the lettering out, and straightened out the lines going to the N and from the H.
A funny thing that I have learned throughout my years in school is that there is a whole ton of math involved with everything I do in my art. For instance, in the following screen shot, you can see where all the points are – the distance between those points are the key to making my type look good..
This is like, the 5th edit – basically the results of printing this logo out 4 different times. writing what I noticed that bothered me visually, and fixing it.. As of right now I have 6 edits done, looking at hopefully having it finished by 10 edits – more than I would like, but this type is fussy for sure.
Ignore the ridiculous amount of things on my desktop… its messy, i know. But waaahhh.
This one up here is what I do once I get close to the end, I set up the page to print the logo at a half inch tall, one and a quarter inches tall, three inches, and six inches tall. I print it out, and if there are any problems on the tiny ones, I make note and see what I can do to help make it super legible – you never know what the logos you design will end up on. I anticipate for this one it’ll end up on business cards, water marking his photos, and possibly (hopefully tshirts..I love it when my work is on a tshirt.)
That said, this is where I’m at, I havnt had time to play around with it since last friday, I’ve been working on other type stuff, and getting ready for a photo shoot.
Have a great week yall! (also, dont hate on me cause I’m a Packer fan!)