wpadminmark – Page 5 – Thoburn Design & Illustration

Steampunk States

steampunk states

When I was asked to created a presentation background for a “prezi”, my first response was, “what’s a prezi”. If you haven’t seen it before, check it out. It’s a new spin on creating dynamic presentations. No more fooling around with slides in powerpoint. With Prezi, you can zoom, scroll and pan around one large canvas. After my 3 minute education via Prezi’s video I got straight to work. The theme of the presentation was the “gears of liberty” and after our initial discussion we agreed that the statue of liberty was the best representation. However, after a disastrous first attempt (no, I’m not posting the image, it’s NOT pretty) the client suggested using the United States. I went back to the drawing board with a clearer picture of what they wanted. I found a fantastic photo of a dismantled watch that I used for the gears. I chopped up images of vintage Stanley Steam engines, steam trains and even souped up Hondas. It was like Orange County Choppers, only on the computer in Frederick county, by a geek with lame facial hair. Yeah, I thought 100+ layers was pretty impressive, until I saw this.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

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

Don’t Tread On Me part II

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.

Refresh Winchester

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

CuriosityKillz.com

More than a year ago I scratched out a very rough sketch of a cat pawing into an aquarium for a snack, and subsequently being pulled in by a huge octopus. It was an idea I had to illustrate the idiom “curiosity killed the cat”. That sketch got filed away in an ever increasing pile of “eventual-projects-to-get-to-when-I-have-the-time”. A couple of months later I caught my son giggling away while snooping through that pile. When I asked him what was so funny, he handed me the sketch of that cat about to be devoured as a result of it’s own curiosity. He loved it, so I decided to move it to the top of the pile. That is how curiositykillz.com was born.

I decided to expand the idea into a series of 9 illustrations depicting the lives of 9 different cats. Back stories were researched and developed.

I want to make something perfectly clear, curiositykillz.com is in no way meant to glorify the death or harming of animals. I’m hoping it’s clear that my tongue is firmly planted in my cheek by the over-the-top stories and illustrations. However there are those who won’t “get it” or don’t think it’s funny. In fact one website has refused to carry the merchandise as they deemed it “offensive”. In our family we have four cats (and a dog along with two fish), and this series of illustrations was born out of love for those cats and an observation of their insane behavior. I personally know the benefits that pets bring to our lives and how important they are.

You can follow curiositykillz on twitter or you can become a fan on Facebook

Chicago Promo Poster

I recently posted the logo I created for the 2010 conference held in Chicago. Below is the promo poster I just wrapped up for display at this years conference.

Chicago promo poster 2010