Thoburn Design & Illustration

Here’s a post sure to touch a nerve. For starters, I’m an artist and this is a blog about art, not politics (there’s plenty of those out there). Personally, I think art is much more interesting and is less likely to cost friendships. Within the past two years a movement started sweeping across America known as the “Tea Party.” A reference to the Boston Tea Party. People who are fed up with one aspect or another of government took to the streets and peacefully protested. When I was approached and asked to develop a logo for the Tea Party movement, I had a few reservations. As the movement grew (and continues to grow) certain “groups” and public figures began to latch-on and highjack the movement, calling it theirs or a result of their work. I disagree. I see it as a group of good, honest, regular Americans on both sides of the political isle exercising their first amendment rights. They’re my neighbors, co-workers and friends regardless of political affiliation. The last thing I wanted was to brand any particular political group. After discussing it further I felt confident that we were in fact branding the movement. However they made it clear that they wanted the logo to be able to stand alongside the elephant and donkey. I was given two additional requirements; create an animal that’s native to America and don’t make it wimpy, like the turkey (sorry Ben). We ultimately settled on the bison (or buffalo, you say “toe-may-toe”, I say “Ta-ma-ta”).

The bison fulfilled both of these requirements and offered some real graphic possibilities. I wanted to do something completely different than the elephant and the donkey. Rather than an icon of a bison I decided to only illustrate the head (above). While the overall  feedback was positive, the client rejected them. They felt that it better suited a sports team mascot. So if you’re a the owner of a team owner and you’re looking for a mascot and logo, hit me up, these are for sale. I went back and looked at the republican and democrat logos again and decided to match them a little more closely.

These concepts were very well received. There was much discussion on whether it needed to read “TEA” or not. I felt it was important to add it since it represented a new and emerging movement. I argued it could be dropped once it had been out for a while, but ultimately the client decided to drop it. As we were finalizing everything I mentioned that I had created an additional concept but decided not to share it. Naturally, this piqued their curiosity and they asked if I would show it to them.

Had I completely hated this concept, that would have been a very dangerous thing to say, but I actually really liked the mark. The only reason I left it out was because initial reaction from others had been confusion. They asked if it was a bull preparing to charge. The client however, absolutely loved it and did not see any confusion. In fact they preferred it’s aggressive look to the more passive one. This got the final approval. The colors were specifically chosen to represent both political parties. As I stated above I did not want this to be a republican or democrat logo, but rather a logo for the people. I placed the star in the middle to unify the colors and to represent the common bond we all share, whether democrats or republicans, and that is the spirit of America (are you tearing up yet?). You never thought a logo could say all of that did you? Will my bison ever stand along side of the elephant and donkey? I don’t know, it’s not likely, given our two-party system. But I was thrilled, and honored to work on the project and I’m proud of the results. But more importantly than all of that, I got paid.

Editorial illustration for Momentum Magazine which is published by the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment.

Wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas and a Blessed New Year!

Like many high school kids, I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do after graduation. One of my best friends was headed for the Marines, and I thought, the Marines are cool, and I like their logo. (I once chose a school to attend based solely on it’s logo & mascot. That didn’t work out well either). I told my buddy that I might be interested in joining up with him, and he signed me up for a weekend boot camp for high school graduates considering a career in the military. Have you seen my resumé? Yeah, there’s no military service record on there. That little weekend getaway convinced me (rather quickly) that I was not cut out for it. I decided instead to draw pictures. However, the affinity for the Marines still remained and 20 years later our paths crossed once again. I got a call from Gannon Beck, an amazing illustrator and founder of Oo-Rah.com, a community that gives Marines a place to reestablish themselves with, and remain part of the Marine Corps community. He had seen my “Dont Tread On Me” poster and asked if I would be interested  in designing another version for t shirts. I was sketching before we even hung up!

Rather than trying to redesign the exact image of the coiled snake on the Gadsden Flag, I decided to take the three coils and re-imagine them. I did a version from the side and two different concepts head on. Since the audience is the Marine Corps I decided to wrap the snake around the Marine’s famous sword. The “banner” design was ultimately chosen and is slated for t-shirts as well as challenge coins.

I was absolutely thrilled when I found out that Refresh was coming to Winchester. I had previously been driving in to D.C. So you can only imagine how excited I was when asked to design the logo for it. For those not familiar with the area, Winchester is located at the northern most tip of Virginia. At only 15 miles from the West Virginia line, it’s the gateway to the Shenandoah valley in Virginia. It’s also well known for apples They grow in abundance here. Whitehouse Foods (the apple sauce company) is headquartered here and every spring Winchester hosts the Apple Blossom Festival. So it was no surprise that an apple had to be a part of the concept. The instructions I received stated that the refresh logo must contain the word “Refresh” along with the city name, and the refresh icon.

The hardest part of designing the logo using the apple theme, was trying to set it a part from Apple. While working on the logo I kept wondering if audiences, not familiar with refresh would think this was only geared towards apple users. I have no idea if this played into the decision to scrap these initial concepts by the client. While they were well received, the client was a bit leery of using the apple, and even seemed to think twice about centering the logo around it.

Round two saw the apple pared down to only a slice. These concepts were overwhelmingly well received as it negated the apple concerns and looked like it belonged among the other Refresh chapters. However there was the issue of the refresh “icon”. Since they were happy with the apple slices as they were, adding the icon to them was not an option. So, I decided to play with the text. I choose “Rezland” for the main font because of it’s clean, round, modern feel. The “E’s” made perfect circles, so I chopped the diagonal line and added arrows to form the refresh icon. Another clean san-serif font, “Engravers Gothic” was chosen for the secondary font on the city name. I pulled in the red from the apple and left the “e-icons” black.

The final apple slice was decided upon with one minor tweak; loose the shadow. With that change made, the new text was added and the logo was complete. You can see the final logo in action here: www.refreshwinchester.org

I was recently requested by American Majority to updated the famous “Dont Tread On Me” Gadsden flag of the coiled snake, using the two colors from their logo for posters they wanted to get printed. My instructions were to update it as much as possible while retaining the feel of the original. With these instructions I decided to “trace” the original and tweak it in Illusrtator, rather than completely redrawing it.

While trying to figure out how best to work in the second color I noticed the snake’s belly was a different element as the rest of the snake. While the top lines run the length of the snakes body, the lines on his belly run around the snake in the opposite direction. This gave me the idea to “break” the snake apart making a “top” and “bottom” allowing for the two colors, and since the “star” is a major element to their logo, I added stars to the tail to form the rattle.

Once the initial illustration was done (A), I turned off the background layer and filled everything. I noticed that it looked a little bit like a spring jumping off the ground, so in order to make it look more like it was sitting on the ground, I “squashed” the bottom coil and brought the section before the tail into view. I continued to tweak different areas of the snake that formed Escher-esque impossibilities, like the point on the top portion just under the neck.

Once I was happy with the final illustration (B), I added in their logo colors.

After color was applied, I brought it into Photoshop and placed it on a parchment background I had created for them on a previous job. I played around with different layer effects until I got the desired effect I wanted. Unfortunately, it shifted the colors so badly that I had to create a second background in greyscale to apply the snake onto. A layer mask was then added to hide the grey background and reveal the parchment. The words, and logo were then added to complete the poster.

No, not the old 2005 Daniel Powter song (although it’s been playing in the back of my head since I started this post). I’m sure I was subconsciously inspired by Pixar’s short “Partly Couldy” (the one shown before “UP”) when I had this thought about happy clouds floating along until one storms by in a really bad mood. As he spreads his lack of cheer around, the other clouds just try to stay outta his way. I wonder if Bob Ross ever painted “happy clouds” to go along with his happy trees. (for personal use)

For the San Diego Zoo

You might not recognize the name, or the face but you’ve probably seen his work. Dan Merchant is an Emmy Award winning writer and filmmaker. His most recent project is a documentary, and companion book titled, Lord Save Us From Your Followers. While I haven’t seen the documentary (yet) I have read the book. Its an honest and personal look at his journey as “Bumper Sticker Man” probing for an answer to the question, why is the Gospel of love dividing America.

Dan and I exchanged a few emails and he was very complimentary of my avatar. He hinted around that he might commission me to illustrate him after he sold enough books. I decided not to wait and surprised him with this.