Sorting out files can be a slow business. Unless you are being sensible, and working in Bridge, a lot of file opening is required to find out what on earth is in hiding behind that icon. Which for me means getting side tracked by a lot of forgotten images.,
Which leads me to the picture above. This was a design that I did for my daughter's school fete but I was never happy enough with it to put it in my folio. In fact, I still find it hard to look at and I have been thinking about why.
Austin Kleon says put your failures out there too, so here it is, and why it was a failure for me.
I was studying design at Old School New School with the unstoppable Veronica Grow, learning a new approach to designing. I tried out hand-made lettering for the first time on this job and ran into endless difficulties The line-up of musicians at the fete kept changing, so the words kept changing (more hand lettering, more scanning) and with other changes in information came changes in scale - more hand lettering and more scanning! Time running, out of course. Quick and familiar work methods, like using vector colouring, sat uncomfortably with the handmade elements. Back to the drawing board, colouring pencils, scan again. Time nearly up. Then the addition of billboards - a larger format - meant duplicating many of these problems.
I learnt a lot and if I did it again I would turn the hand made lettering into a scalable font BEFORE I did anything else. I haven't returned to lettering by hand, (just not my thing), but I had the good fortune to meet some peers at OSNS, who readily took to this craft, and when I need a bit of beautiful hand crafted lettering, I can commission them!
Vintage fabric samples, used in the bunting, were provided by Mim from MiM Found Ena, a design studio dedicated to beautiful handmade clothing, jewellery and accessories.