Little warm-up sketches of some strange trees.
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From the monthly archives:
May 2009
My 8 year old daughter has just created an organization for the benefit of the brain. No, not the lab rat… OUR brains. Won’t you join her and back up a cause that we all could benefit from? Heaven knows we all need more brain.
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Musical Birds came from a sketch I did a while ago that I felt had some merit to complete. It doubles as a Mother’s Day gift for my mom, being a bird collector. I know I’m a little late, but I think she’ll enjoy it nonetheless.
This is a newer technique for me, more of a loose and playful look, and I’m rather enjoying it. I make myself use a larger brush than will fit in smaller areas so that I don’t get so tied up with the details. It’s much quicker for me too!
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Here’s something I did a while ago that matches this week’s Illustration Friday theme perfectly:
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Bugs are cute. It’s true! Look at ‘em through a cute magnifying glass and they’re ultra cute! Ok, maybe not, but cute magnifying glasses are cute. That’s true. So started my journey to design a magnifying glass, logo, and packaging that would appeal to young children. Being an Insect Lore product, of course it had to feature an endearing bug character. The name “Bugifiers” was chosen, and I went to work.
I went back and forth designing the logo and the actual magnifying glass, which turned out to be the best way for me to brainstorm this product. I’ll explain why.
First, I sketched up some fun logo ideas, incorporating the glass of the magnifier. Here’s one of the ideas I came up with:
Fine and dandy, but it didn’t resonate with me. Nothing here drew me in. No reason to buy this magnifier over any other one on the market. It was a bit illegible as well for a product logo and was spelled wrong. I then moved over to sketching up product ideas.
When you look at someone that is looking through a magnifier, their eye get huge. That’s funny! How could I incorporate a bug and a big eye in the product design? Maybe have the bug looking back at the kid, and have one eye really big? Here’s what I came up with:
They loved the idea. So I moved back to the logo brainstorming. Now, I had an intriguing element to add to the logo to give it some charm.
I moved to Adobe Illustrator at this point to create the custom font and logo. I played around with the look further there.
And the final logo here with the customary Insect Lore background:
Prototypes of the actual Bugifiers came back, and I made some revisions to them with additional sketches. Chinese manufacturers are very literal, so the more detail given about your expectations, the better.
Changes were made, and then I moved on to the packaging designs. We added a hole into the package card so that they could be picked up, and tried out before the purchase. Here you’ll see the actual Bugifiers, and then in their cards.
This whole creation process is a thrill for me. I love seeing a project from an idea all the way to production. Changes of direction have to made all the time through this process. Anything from production limitations and costs, to making it fit on the retailers’ shelves come into play. But it’s all worth it in the end.
If you’re interested in buying one online, go to http://www.insectlore.com
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