Here is another sketch from creative nights I host after hours. I usually grab the closest thing to me that isn’t the requisite cup of tea or cookie and spend an hour or so on it. This is a whistle my parents brought me from their trip to Russia for my daughter, who has a burgeoning collection of musical souvenirs from their travels. The script on a circle was a good exercise in pre-planning typography.
I’ve recently been designing collateral and packaging for Olympia Provisions, a fine meat-centric cluster of restaurants in Portland, Oregon and purveyor of American Charcuterie. Their branding is already top notch, so when the opportunity popped up to create their holiday postcard, it was purely fun. The process on this was super succinct with just a rough sketch of the idea before approval for design & illustration. Guess you can’t fail with the formula of meat + wreath. Meaty Christmas to all!
Thanks to Hayden Walker for illustration skills that helped keep the project on time and on budget. A recent graduate, Hayden is a new to Portland and has helped the Bureau over the last few months on several projects, including the Oregon VS Oregon beer label design by decade.
Here is a headline I lettered for Tofurky (through CD Gary Huck) to use in their holiday ads promoting their meat alternative products geared towards Thanksgiving, Christmas and the like. It was created in the same vein as the lettering library I created for Tofurky, but with a (relatively) more formal feel to the piece.
As a person very focused on food, and traditions, and therefore food traditions, I liked the message of this. Being a carnivore, I skate carefree through each meal eating whatever I please. Pretty much the only thing that stops me in my tracks is a stewed cabbage. For vegetarians and vegans it isn’t always as easy, especially during traditional meals centered around meat or in areas where people aren’t as aware of what being vegetarian/vegan means. So all you vegginuts, Tofurky has you covered for whatever tempeh/soy/non-meat based holiday feast you might want to gorge on. Here is the lettering incorporated into one of the ads.
My latest collaboration with Tofurky and creative director Gary Huck was creating an illustration treatment for their annual Tofurky Trot. Title ‘Chase Compassion’ this year, the trot is a 5K charity event run in both Portland and Los Angeles. Or, for the super organized, something you can organize in your own hometown. My artwork was used on the website and on the race participation shirt.
Several years ago I participated in the Sketchbook Project. My submission was a derivative on the theme adhere to me and I made a book titled “Things that Stick”. You can see it in its entirety here.
After many years of mobile tours and growing the Sketchbook Project, an online shop of selected spreads has been opened at The Brooklyn Art Library, touted as the world’s largest collection of sketchbooks. And one of my illustrations is included! It is one of my more minimal pages of the character Label Head. Poor Label Head has an entire short story written about him on index cards that is sitting in the second drawer of my office stuff. Maybe I should take him back out and finish that up. At least for now he is immortalized and available for sharing with others.
I’ve also chosen to donate all artist proceeds (30%) to helping low-income schools get their own library of sketchbooks.
Here is another snippet from a longer-term lettering project I’ve been working on for Tofurky. Below is the second set of two series exploring their company name in a casual, hand drawn style (see the first set here).
As part of their online content the company posts recipes and tips under the name Counter Culture, which I gave some bling in this lettering piece. I also got to draw a bunch of small ingredients to go along with the type (matching their current brand illustration look), and implement one of the type treatments from above.
