March 27

before i begin, i would like to excuse myself if any of the following is nothing but gibberish. i’ve been sick with the flu for the past week and i think it has completely fried my brain. moving on…

today’s post is a complete walk-through of some of my latest pieces for the brooklyn circus. as always, the good guys at the bkc are looking to push the boundaries of their customers’ style and, in doing so, asked me to design a bunch of custom hand-lettered shirts. each shirt will show my hand drawing, the design process, and one colorway sample of a shirt in completion. there’s so much more after the break, enjoy!

let’s look at this first design to kick things off. this design was based off the lettering of some of my favorite cartoons of the mid-twentieth century. it’s very shag and doesn’t really stick to one main style, yet they stack together rather nicely to create somewhat of a family.

the original began more with the intention to really personify the brooklyn circus. as you can see from the final piece above, i ended up stearing away from that “nationwide entertainment” feel. i also broke the yn ligature in fear that it was forming too much of a swastika shape.

one of the final colorways sent in for approval.

this next design is also sporting a retro feel, maybe a little different than the prior though.

here we have a hand-sketched typeset along with a three dimensional structure of sorts containing a few old-school elephant illustrations.

the brooklyn circus loves the cmyk color palette for their brand, but i was curious what some muddier colors might look like.

i decided to keep this one fairly simple.

from here we move to a more complex design.

i had the elements exactly how i planned, but the proportions were just not right. i decided to bring it into illustrator and mess around a bit with the sizes and colors.

once i was happy with the actual layout, i moved it onto a shirt and tried a few different colorways.

not the typical cmyk palette, but slightly modified to give it a more caribbean feel.

the last design i’d like to run through is also the most recent. ironically, it was also the most complicated in terms of putting it together.

each piece was hand drawn and then assembled into a single photoshop document (with the exception of the elephant which is a piece of old clip art i found in an old magazine i had laying around.)

after a surpringly exhaustive layout process, i finally settled on this stacked design. using the cmyk scheme of the brooklyn circus, i began playing around with colorways to see which might work best. they all had different personalities and were fun in different ways, so it was hard to narrow down my favorites.

one of the final versions was this black design. for some reason the yellow elephant amused me to no end…i blame day-quil.

i hope you enjoyed this walk-through as much as i enjoyed compiling it.

Posted by jon on March 27, 2008.