Illustration – Thoburn Design & Illustration

The evolution of business travel

Zuca makes really cool luggage. A favorite of makeup artists for years, they have drawers and a sturdy exoskeleton you can sit on. They wanted to expand their market and reach high end business travelers. I was contacted by the Los Angeles based ad agency they had hired, to create an illustration to be used in an ad. The logo I had created for the mechanics (Paul Revere on horseback) had caught the agency’s attention, and it was the style they wanted to follow. My instructions were to mimick the evolution chart, and in each stage have the traveler experiencing some form of pain and suffering due to their luggage. They envisioned two different concepts, one that followed the traditional horizontal chart, and another that was more dimensional.

Once the sketches had been approved, I finalized the silhouettes in Illustrator.

Here’s a couple close ups of some of the stages.

And here’s a look at the final ad.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Thanks for all your support in 2012. I couldn’t do what I love without every one of you.

Borden’s Elsie

I received a call from an ad agency in Dallas asking me if I’d be interested in taking on a logo project. After I agreed, they informed me that I was one of a couple different artists selected to work on a new logo for Borden. Borden, founded in 1857, is one of the top ten largest companies in America. They were considering updating their logo and were especially interested in my silhouette style logos, specifically, the Mechanics Program. Elsie, the company’s mascot has been through numerous revisions over the years.

The first thing I set out to do was simplify Elsie’s face. I tried two completely new ideas, opting for a head-on view and a third based off their current three-quarter view.

They felt the first two deviated too far from the original, whereas the third version was closer to what they were looking for. I added in some very simple daisies, and experimented with how it would work reversed on a solid background.

With the head completed, I moved on to Elsie’s body. As you can see from the samples through the years, Elsis’s never had a full body. I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to experiment with the idea of giving her one. So I played around with several different poses.

All were very well-received, but they were only interested in proceeding with the fourth, less anamorphic sample. This time they wanted it even simpler. They instructed me to completely strip the details in the face, and all the shading. I provided one final sample before the project came to a halt (the colors were randomly chosen to show contrast).

The client ultimately rejected the idea to revise their logo, and decided to stay with their current one. If you’re interested, Chris Whetzel (another artist selected to work on this project), has a similar blog post on his creative process. I really loved his interpretation, it’s a very nice update.

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:

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.

Court Report cover illustration

Being asked to do an illustration for a magazine is fun and exciting work. Being asked to illustrate the cover is even better, especially when it’s for a well crafted article written in the style of a Hardy Boy’s mystery. It was titled “The Mississippi Five and the Case of the Missing Case”. After being briefed on the general concept and reading the article I couldn’t wait to get started. During the initial conversation I grabbed my sketch pad and sketched out the picture that had formed in my mind.

The client loved the concept which allowed me to get straight to work in Illustrator.

Once I had all my lines and shapes in place, I brought everything into photoshop to finalize and add in the dramatic atmosphere.

The original illustration lines were dropped on top and a layer style was applied just to help the edges pop. Once I had finished it in Photoshop, the left side felt a little empty, so I added in a dead tree, and a murder of crows. I left room at the top for the mast head and along the right side for the mailing address. This was presented to the client as my final draft which they were thrilled with. Best of all there were no changes needed. Final approval was given and they were sent off for printing. I was really quite happy with the final product once it arrived.