wpadminmark – Page 2 – Thoburn Design & Illustration

Young American Revolution cover

The Young Americans for Liberty publish a magazine titled “Young American Revolution”. For their March issue, they asked me to create a cover illustration for an article titled “More than Just Nope” about the hard road ahead for limited government, and the dilemma facing the Republican party. They wanted a fork in a road with one direction heading towards debt and destruction, while the other road headed towards peace and prosperity. Armed with this information, I sketched out a couple different thumbnail options.

The client liked the second option best, feeling that it put the subject more front-and-center. Since the sketch was fairly small, it needed to be redrawn.

I made some minor adjustments from the original thumbnail, like widening the fork in the road, and moving the signs from behind the guy to his left and right. I was really unhappy with the guy I had drawn for a number of reasons (help, I’m falling over), so I decided to completely redraw him by modeling him after the organizations Executive Director. Several of the elements, like the buzzard and tank, were drawn separately and added in later.

I brought each of these sketches into Illustrator and began to create the final cover (below).

Here’s a look with mast head and article titles in place:

And here’s a look at the final printed magazine:

Souper Natural Kitchen

I was pretty excited when a local charity approached me to create their logo. Here’s a description I was given from their materials:

The Souper Natural Kitchen was created to raise money to purchase fresh, local whole food to those in need in the community. Through a series of monthly SouperTuesday “soup” dinners, the community will have an opportunity to provide its financial support to those in need, get a terrific meal, a cooking class and connect with our local farmers.

The challenge they presented me with was to blend farm, fresh, soup and charity all into one logo. Below are just a few of the initial sketches.

The client immediately fell in love with vegetable soup bowl (far right). Rather than create my usual smooth, streamlined logo which I’m partial too, I felt that this would look best if it retained it’s sketchy natural (organic) appearance. So I had to transform the clean smooth lines I had created in illustrator, into chunky, sketchy grungy ones.

This was done using Illustrator’s “roughen” filter under Effect -> Distort & Transform. The size was set to almost nothing (.3) while the detail was set to 100%. Once I was happy with the results, it was time to apply some color. This time I didn’t want to do it in Photoshop. I wanted this logo to look sketched and watercolored, but to be completely vector. So I added strokes inside of each element and applied a watercolor brush to each one.

Once I was happy with the final results, I added in the text, applying the same technique used on the lines of the bowl. I started with a typewriter font, and roughened it up a bit.

The bowl was placed on top, and a checkered pattered was added around “kitchen” for the final, completed logo (below).

Just in case you’re wondering, yes, with a name like that I had draw up a few sketches just for fun.

Gravity Logo

I’ve always been a huge fan of M.C. Escher. I assume that most people are and share great respect for the man and his work. When I was asked to create a logo for Gravity, I drew from Escher for inspiration. Among several sketches I did, one included Escher’s “impossible triangle”.

I rotated the triangle so that it was upside down, rounded all the corners, then “broke” the top bar apart, and added another bar to form the letter “G”. This was all done in Illustrator based off of my sketch.

After the outline was completed, I added solid gray and applied gradient overlays to each section which helped to add more depth and dimension. Once completed in Illustrator I opened it in Photoshop to apply a brushed metal look. Noise was added, followed by a motion blur to each individual section in the correct direction. For the rounded corners separate radial blurs were applied, and layer masks were added to hide what was not needed.

After all the corners were done, color was then applied and a shadow was added under it. Below are examples of how it’s being used.

My NASCAR Connection

I am completely thrilled and honored to announce that, earlier this year, I was privileged to be an advisor and designer for the launch of the American Majority Racing team. This honor included designing the racing logo, signage (including victory lane), merchandise (including apparel), team uniforms (including driver) and the official #81 car driven by 2011 NASCAR Toyota All Star champion Jason Bowles. The #81 car was unveiled on Thursday, February 9th to a nationwide TV audience, and will make it’s inaugural run at the Daytona 500 later this month.

The development of the overall design, look and feel of the entire racing program, was built around the #81 car which carries the message(s) PledgeToVote.com and Keep America Free. An eagle runs along the hood and top while blending into the the stars and stripes which wrap around the sides and back of the car. Gradients were overlaid onto the stripes to add dimension and give the feeling of movement.

I cannot thank American Majority Racing, MacDonald Motorsports and Tim Hunt, enough for this amazing and thrilling opportunity. Be sure to check back for more updates throughout the year, as I’ll be posting more art and photos from various events.

Illustrating Orlando . . .

or, how many clichéd Florida icons can you squeeze into one word? When I was asked to create a logotype for a convention to be held in Orlando Florida next year, I wasn’t sure where to start. I had sketched out several different ideas that I kind of liked.

But there was one idea I kept coming back to. I had tried to avoid it because of the clichéd nature of it. I decided to give it a shot, after the first round concepts were rejected. After living in Orlando for almost a decade, I know first hand that it’s an inspiring city with lots of fun and entertaining elements to choose from. I wanted to capture the fun and excitement of the city but wasn’t sure which element to settle on, so I just decided to throw a different one in for each letter.

This concept unitized the different entertainment themed elements forming lower-case letters. I was most concerned about the readability of the “r”. With it being inside the “o” I was afraid people wouldn’t see it as a letter.

Once completed in Illustrator, I added a splash around the dolphin to emphasize the “r”. Even though I was very happy with the final result the client rejected it due to poor readability. When tested, people thought it read “Atlanta”. I still don’t see it, but if you’re reading this and you’re with the Convention Center and Visitor’s Bureau of Atlanta, this bad boy is available if you’re interested . . . of course, I’m only kidding. I wasn’t ready to completely give up on this concept, so I decided to change from lower-case to upper-case letters.

I scrapped the idea of using the dolphin as the “r”, but I couldn’t have the hoop without him so I moved Flipper to the top left and kept the splash. Now he was jumping more into the “o” as opposed to out of it. A flamingo would now form the letter r. With all the elements in place, I dropped black letters in behind the illustrations and placed it back on the blue field. This helped to make everything pop and poor readability was no longer an issue. This version received final approval.

Here’s some close-ups of the different elements.

Here’s the logo in use on a promo poster.

Two logos selected for inclusion in Logo Lounge book 7

I was thrilled and honored to receive word that two of my logos (shown below) will be included in Rockport Publisher’s Logo Lounge book 7 available in July 2012.

The first was created for the John Hancock Committee for the States, and the other was for Kara Collegeman Photography.

You can read more about the judges and selection progress here.