Cranks & Shocks Case Study

Posted on May 18, 2015 by jackstandbridge

Here’s another case study that I did recently. The brief was a bike shop looking to incorporate some stylishness to their brand, and also include an antiquated feel. An establishment looking to up their game and cement their position as a permanent fixture on the map, while catching more eyes with something that gives a more unique feel.

I started with planning out the symmetry in the text across the middle. Having an ampersand and an S next to each other is convenient in that they share similar elements. After several iterations, and having found something I was pleased with, I started work on the other elements. The monogram in the bottom centre is loosely based on the letters from the main text, but needed some obvious adjustments. The flourishes at the top also lead to a fun design in the middle: a bike made of flourishes. After planning the ribbons, I also worked in some additional flourishes in the negative space below the main text.

Each of these elements is suited well to being extracted and used in different places. For example, the monogram is convenient for a logo on a document or as a watermark, while the flourish bicycle functions well as a logo on a letterpress business card or promotional stickers. The main text can be lifted out to form the header on documents, and to suit any other uses such as banners or printed straight on narrow surfaces. The full design fits well on the side of a vehicle and on the window of the business.

Highland Drachm Whisky Label Case Study.

Posted on April 20, 2015 by jackstandbridge

This week I’ve been working a logo design case study for whisky bottle branding. It’s given me the chance to do some more exploration of the digital side of logo design, as most of the work was put in at the vectorization stage. After some initial pencil sketch designs to get an idea of the right direction for the piece, I quickly transitioned to working with the piece in terms of nodes and Bézier handles.

The goal of the piece was to create something through which I could explore some aspects of coloured work that would produce a usable end product. In terms of the lettering on the piece, it’s a blend of rustic, traditional and modern Roman Capitals. The mixture of styles gives an impression of not only modernity but also timelessness and an artisan influence. This piece would be ideal for a smaller company looking to update their branding as part of growing their business and reputation while maintaining the impression of hand craftsmanship and traditional techniques.

Here’s a little preview of the piece as it would appear on the label of a bottle:

The Medium is the Message

Posted on February 10, 2015 by jackstandbridge

I learnt about an idea recently that the way in which a message is conveyed often tells us more than the actual content of the message. Certainly, there was a story a little while ago about a man who decided to hand write all his tweets and take photographs of them instead of typing them out. He didn’t change the things he was tweeting about, but he changed the way he was presenting the content. Needless to say, it attracted a lot of attention, and I heard about it through some of the lettering and writing channels I pay attention to.

For me, much of what I do is about the medium rather than the message. I spend my hours and days crafting the letter forms and composition in ways that complement the message I have chosen, but the actual subject matter of the words comes under much less scrutiny throughout the process. The phrase “The Medium is the Message” could imply that the the two things are one and the same, and are inseparable from each other, but in this context I would say that it means that the medium is not just a delivery system for the content, but that is more significant than the content itself. Of course, if I only had the words to communicate, I could simply write them down and take a picture like the twitter user, so it would be true to say that it applies to what I do.

Make No More Excuses in 2015

Posted on January 27, 2015 by jackstandbridge

So it’s a new year, but I decided to wait to do this piece until we were a little bit of the way into it so that it didn’t come of as a New Year’s Resolution. It’s pretty easy to make excuses for why we don’t do things. Sometimes it’s things we might even want to do, but it’s hard to motivate ourselves to do, and instead we end up mindlessly consuming media instead of doing anything productive. It’s what our brains seems to desire, but not what they need. The virtual equivalent of junk food, so to speak.

So, this year, I’m only going to make one more excuse, and then after that, no more. So what’s my excuse? “Sorry, I have to stick to my plans.” My excuse is to keep to my commitments. After all, what’s more fulfilling than achieving things?

Incidentally, this piece was also a little experiment for me to see how I have progressed since I started lettering. When I first gave it a go, I did a piece a day for a week. To measure up to what I came up with in that week, I decided to do this piece in a day, too. Starting from scratch with the phrase “No Excuses” I sketched out several designs before I found that I preferred having something a bit longer, and lengthened the phrase. From then, I moved onto sketching the piece out at full size and inked it all today!

It’s Never Too Late to Start

Posted on January 15, 2015 by jackstandbridge

It’s been an interesting week for me. Coming back home from visiting family in another country was going to be fine, but unfortunately the trip back was interrupted by some surprise friends in the form of kidney stones and a cold. In addition to that, my wife suddenly had a new job start, all of which meant that I didn’t get round to doing a piece for this Monday’s blog post. So I could have though it no big deal, and just put it off until next week, but I’ve had a piece that I wanted to do for a while now on the back burner that fit what was going on quite well.

It’s never too late to start. Well, for me, I started pretty late. Past the deadline, in fact. But that doesn’t mean that it didn’t get done. Sometimes it’s too easy to fall into an all-or-nothing mindset where we think that if we slip up or miss something once then there’s no point carrying on. This can often lead to us abandoning the things we had previously told ourselves we would do, whether it be working hard, exercising, or sticking to resolutions. How many people make resolutions each year only to end up not sticking with them? Probably most. And how many of those failed attempts begin to fail right before we give up entirely? I’d say probably most again.

So this piece is me saying that even if I’m late I’m going to keep doing it. I won’t give up just because I hit a bump in the road. Sometimes starting is all you need to do to be able to keep going and get something done. And it’s never too late to start.

Be A Better You

Posted on December 23, 2014 by jackstandbridge

It’s around this time of year that people start thinking about what their New Year’s resolutions will be. Though it’s better to make serious lifestyle changes rather than half though out plans just because of the time of year, I thought I would make a piece pre-empting the following year.

This piece started out as one my daily doodles a little while ago. I enjoyed experimenting with the composition, and used a similar layout for another piece at around the same time, but felt that this one went well with the phrase, so I decided to ink it.

There are a few new elements in this one that I haven’t explored much in other pieces. First of all, it’s one of the few times I have used a monoline style (“BE A” and “YOU”), where there is no real difference in the thickness of the strokes. While I tend to think that a high contrast between thick and thin strokes looks better, there is certainly a place for monoline styles, and here it’s in the less important supporting elements of the piece. One advantage of this is that thin hairlines on letters can often get lost, or hard to make out at smaller sizes, thereby decreasing the legibility of the piece.

The second thing to talk about is the decision to join the ETT in “BETTER”. It’s a bit of an old sign painting trick to join a double T together and save a little space, but I decided to take it a little further and have the serifs of the E and T but up against each other and share a bit of the same space. It’s not really a necessary technique, seeing as I have as much space as I want to play with when designing on blank paper, but it adds a little interest to the piece, and lends a hint of the old sign style lettering that you can sometimes still see painted on the gable ends of old buildings (at least in Europe – I can’t speak for elsewhere.)

With Christmas so close, and days spent travelling and shopping, daily doodles have taken a back seat, and I’m taking a couple of weeks off from doing them. Fear not, however, for they will return soon enough, at the start of the new year.

Merry Christmas!

May You Live in Interesting Times

Posted on December 16, 2014 by jackstandbridge

This week’s piece is something I did for a daily doodle a little while ago. I liked the design, so I decided to only show off a part of it when I posted it at the time and save the rest for an inked piece. Here’s the full version!

When I first started making lettering pieces, I focused a lot on learning about letter forms, in the same way that someone learning the guitar might focus on getting the notes to sound nice. While nice notes and good letter forms are important, lately I’ve been more interested in exploring what makes the composition of a piece work well. Every note in a piece may sound perfect, but if they’re in the wrong places, or they don’t complement each other well, then the piece isn’t going to be a success. In the same way, if the hierarchy and combination of styles in a lettering piece aren’t properly thought out, then the piece will fall short of where it could.

At the same time as all that, I’ve been experimenting with more ornamentation if my pieces, which also helps the composition as a whole. Of course, I have always liked using lots of ornamentation in lettering, but I’ve been including it lately with more of a mind towards using it to tie pieces together. Here are a few examples from my daily doodles this week.

Be a Better You

Live in the Moment

Custom Hand Lettering

L’appel du Vide

But of course, I still take the time to practice some good old letter forms. Here’s a Gothic piece, Take Care:

I’m going to take a week off from doing daily doodles because of travelling, staying with people and Christmas stuff, but inked pieces will still be coming out at a rate of one a week.

Vertigo

Posted on December 8, 2014 by jackstandbridge

This week, I ran found that I had used the last of my large pad of paper that I usually do inked pieces on, so I turned to doing something digital instead. One of the pieces I did for my daily doodles turned out quite well, and I felt it was worth refining a little. Here’s the sketch I first made for my daily piece, in pencil in an A5 notepad:

From there, I took a few square photos of it (I don’t have a scanner, unfortunately) and then took it into Inkscape to turn it into a digital version. I used the software to iron out all the little bumps and irregularities that you don’t quite notice when you have it on a piece of paper in front of you, but which stand out once it’s displayed on the screen. For instance, in the digital version, the baseline for the smaller letters is a smooth curve, which uses the same line as the top of the letters and the spurs mid way up each letter. After tracing the outline, it’s much quicker to make the little drop shadow by duplicating the whole thing, shifting it slightly, then cutting away everything that lies underneath the original. From then, it’s just a matter of choosing a splash of colour,

As for the other daily doodles this week, they have a mainly calligraphic element to them. The first, “Imagine” is a simple Copperplate inspired doodle I drew a couple of days ago with some flourishes to give it a rounder shape.

The second is one I did at the start of the month. It’s a mixture of Copperplate and Gothic styles.

The third is some real calligraphy! Surprising, I know, but I do sometimes do other things than lettering with pencils and fine liners. “Strive for more,” done with a Pilot Parallel 3.8mm pen.

Lastly, something that’s coming up next week, for one of my daily pieces I started designing an ornate piece that will be up in ink next Monday once I have gone to buy some more paper.

The Future is Soon

Posted on December 1, 2014 by jackstandbridge

Lately, I have been working on composing pieces with more ornamentation and flourishes. My goal has been to get a better understanding of how to create lettering pieces that aren’t based solely on the letter forms and the shapes of the words. Doing a daily doodle has given me some nice time to focus on exploring different options, and so for this week’s piece, I’ve used one of my daily designs.

“The Future is Soon.” I’m pretty excited about the future, and thankfully, it’s coming pretty soon. At times, the future has been much further away, but at the moment, the future is the closest it has ever been. That is to say that in the past, things didn’t change much for a really long time. Nowadays, however, things are changing much more. Change is, if nothing else, interesting, and though “may you live in interesting times” is often said to be a curse, I can’t help but feel excited.

The phrase “may you live in interesting times” is said to come from Chinese, though no source has been found. The nearest related expression translates to “better to live as a dog in an era of peace than a man in times of war.” And speaking of the future, it’s likely to have the least amount of war since pretty much forever. People often say that the world is going downhill, but in fact, we live in a time of peace and prosperity greater than any other. It seems like the future will be a pretty good time to live; that said, no day is better than today.

Here are some of the daily doodles I’ve done this week:

“The Future is Soon.” The sketch I made into an inked piece today.

“Winter.” A piece I made yesterday, the last day of November, in an effort to be a little seasonal.

“Do Your Best.” A little piece to motivate myself to do well, but also to know that doing your best is always something you can do if you put in the time.

“Golden.” A single word piece to practice some flourishes and some tall letters in a circular design.

In other news, I got through the first of the nice A5 Rhodia pads of paper I bought a while ago. I started on just for daily doodles and the drop caps I did in Inktober. The “Golden” sketch was the last piece in this one, with “Do Your Best” being the first of a new pad. Here’s a picture of all the pieces I made with this pad:

There are 57 designs here, and the pads come with 80 pages, which means I used 23 pages for sketching, tracing, ideas and as guard sheets.

The Journey of 1000 Miles Begins with One Step

Posted on October 21, 2014 by jackstandbridge

About a year ago, I discovered a thing called hand lettering. Having an interest in calligraphy, I had stumbled upon something that seemed similar. Custom designed and hand drawn pieces consisting of letters and words. An art form that centred around calligraphy and typography, constructed in pencil and ink. I started to notice more about the designs of letters I saw around me, and took an interest in what made something a good or bad design. Soon, I began making my own lettering pieces. I didn’t know much, at that point, and looking back now, I can see how far I have come. At the same time, the further I go, the further I see I have to go. Each new thing learnt opens doors and makes me ask new questions.

This is a piece I’ve been planning for a couple of weeks now, but only just got around to creating a final version. Having enjoyed making a few pieces that would suit a poster/T-shirt design, I have been keen to make some more in a similar style. I did experiment with some of the fun sign painting space saving techniques that I used in Standing on the Shoulders of Giants, but in the end the piece was better suited to a more standard layout. However, I did take the chance to combine script letters with Roman capitals, (here the J in Journey, and the S in Step). Keeping the decorative style the same helps the letters look like they belong where they are, and allows their differences to add a bit of flair to the piece without standing out too much.

In other news, Inktober will be drawing to a close soon, and with it my daily drop caps will have their second instalment ready. Today saw V as the latest piece, so you can wait expectantly for next week to see what they all look like, or check out my twitter page to see daily updates of each piece. Recently, I have also been studying Italic calligraphy in an effort to learn more about the origins of script style lettering and the finer (or in this case blunter) points of broad nibbed pens. As such, you may see a bit of a shift towards Italic inspired styles. Up until now, I have preferred to base script pieces off Copperplate, (as you can see with this one), but I think it would be nice to see how some Italic pieces will fare.

Jack Standbridge

Hand Lettering

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