Quotes and Sayings

This week's project is all about illustrating quotes and sayings from media, family, or anywhere.

Liz Harry was the first artist I reasearched for this project; as a freelance illustrator and type artist based in Liverpool, she creates illustrated typography on murals to her own merchandise. She showcases lots of her work on Instagram, @lizharrydesign

Next, I researched Christopher Wool, who, as well as a sculptor, photographer and printmaker, is an American type artist from Chicago, whose most famous for his bold, black stencil lettering on white background and its post-conceptual themes.

The Designing Process

When it came to my initial designs, I took inspiration from Liz Harry and drew hand-lettered typography. The quote I chose was a comical one from my sister, 'M&S IS LETHAL, ONE WRONG MOVE AND AN 80 YEAR OLD HAS HALF A TROLLEY UP YOUR BUMHOLE". It was from a text message about a rather traumatic event in M&S...

It began by some rough sketches on a corner of paper, to drawing it out on A4 and outlining with marker. I scanned the page onto my Mac to begin editing in Illustrator, as seen in the photo to the right! I didn't love the look of it on Illustrator, so I decided to experiment with Procreate.

There's a lot of rough sketching, re-drawing, recolouring, chopping and changing in this video! Since hand-drawn illlustrated type is something I don't do often, and being new to Procreate, I couldn't quite achieve the Liz Harry style I was going for. Ultimately, I experimented, but wanting to produce a finished, quality outcome by the end of the week, I knew I wouldn't be able to choose this art style for this project. But who's to say I won't keep experimenting with hand lettering?

I didn't stop there though! I looked on Instagram for some typography inspiration from accounts I follow, and I found it from @olivia.designs on Instagram.

Olivia Sutcliffe is a designer based in Manchester who creates and sells type based prints. Her Billy Joel typography inspired me, taking me down a fonts route rather than a hand drawn one. I adored her colour palette that combined a cobalt blue with a neutral orange and bright red. I was inspired by the placement of the letters and her choice of fonts. The stocky, serifed 'slow down' with the long and thin 'doing fine' creates such a great contrast and really helps to fill the page! I love how each line looks like pieces of a puzzle perfectly fit together.

Choosing a different quote this time, a song lyric from my favourite band Set It Off, I experimented with different contrasting typefaces, thick, thin and wide. Although I didn't choose individual colours for each line (I tried this and it didn't look as good as I'd expected) I chose different colour variations, from contrasting to complementary!

I really wanted to make a print out of the original quote from my sister, so using the designs above as a template, I created a print that came out like this! I love it so much, it made everyone chuckle, even the little peach!

And, as they say, 'that's a wrap' on the Quotes & Sayings project!