Mary Kate McDevitt. Another Spectacular Letterer!

I keep searching for and easily finding letterers and illustrators and designers about whom I have never heard.

I came across Mary Kate McDevitt in an article in PRINT magazine from February 21, 2015. The article is entitled,"The Explosive Hand Lettering Rebellion." Check it out! Lots of extremely cool pieces by several different letterers (including Mary Kate).

Mary Kate McDevitt's website


I love to see the initial sketch prior to adding color and shading, etc. Here is one such example:

I absolutely love everything about this piece! Here is what Mary Kate says about it on her website:

Heartwork Poster

I was pleased as punch to create a poster for the great organization Heartwork. Heartwork is a project designed to raise money for art supplies within the art room at Target House—this wonderful home-away-from-home for the families of children facing long-term treatment at St. Jude® Children's Research Hospital. The theme of the collection of posters is "hope" and this years line up was filled with talented folks. Check out the entire collection, but I think all the posters are sold out.

Client: Heartwork

I'm a sucker for dots and flourishes. I also have a thing for ampersands. I want to get better at designing the "decorations" that go with the lettering... like this. And, I love the faded and slightly distressed peach-colored background behind everything.

Better Call Saul... Tobias Saul, that is.

I LOVE this! I want to learn how to do this amazingly detailed type of lettering. And, I love that Tobias Saul, the letterer (check out his website below), used the title of one of my favorite TV shows, "Better Call Saul" for his self-promotion! SO cool.

http://www.tobiassaul.de/

Here are a couple more of his lettering pieces:

Weekly Lettering Project #2: Makers Gonna Make

I'm sure this phrase has been said/made before. I'm getting ready to go to three "maker's" workshops on the next three consecutive Saturdays. One is paper-making, one is screen printing, and one is hand painted lettering. I'm really excited for all three of them, and I hope that at least one piece will be good enough to enter into the abCU show in Downtown Champaign, April 8-10!

I'm really happy that I am starting to figure out how to do this three dimensional look on my lettering. The next thing I need to learn is how to make realistic-looking shadows. I should look online for a tutorial. Also, I have free access to Lynda.com classes through my Champaign Public Library card! I'll check there, too.

I wish I had added more detail to the background for this piece, but maybe it doesn't need it. On to weekly lettering project #3!

Have a great week!

Weekly Lettering Project #1: Always be KIND

This lettering piece may not look much different to you than some of the other pieces I've posted here, but the difference is that I was able to take my time and not rush to get it all finished in one day as I have in the past! I am now creating one lettering piece per week rather than one per day. My goals are to have a little more time to myself in the evenings, to create lettering using some different techniques which I'll now have time to begin to learn, to create pieces with more visual interest and dimension and also, when I can figure this one out, with a more organic feel... more soul.

Another thing I may do at times is revisit a piece that I created for my daily HGT phrase project and edit/add/revise it to make it better than it was.

Admittedly, it was easier to have a daily goal and stick to it than to have a more lax goal of one per week and stick to that! I already took more than a week to get this first one posted.

I also want to write a blog post each day, or nearly each day, about some other wonderful piece of work by someone else. I've already done so with the last few blog posts, but I've yet to stick to a daily post. Wish me luck! And, I hope you enjoy today's lettering piece. :) I think the message is really really really really really important, by the way.

EMOTION CREATURES BOOK NOW AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE!

Emotion Creatures

By Gloria Roubal

Ahhh.... Jessica Hische!

Yes, Jessica Hische is still my idol, my hero, one of my greatest inspirations when it comes to lettering, illustration, and design.

If you want to see some spectacular work, visit jessicahische.is. And by the way, her bio on her about page starts with the sentence, "Here’s a brief history of who I am, what I do, and why we should be friends." I love that warmth and welcoming opening statement. :)

One of the earliest projects of hers of which I'm aware is her "12 Days of Christmas" card set that she created in 2006. By the way, she had included these in her portfolio which led to her to working for the famous designer and letterer, Louise Fili when she (Jessica) was very young and just starting her career. She immediately relocated to NYC upon being offered this prestigious job. This was such a huge accomplishment for a young designer, and she proved herself to be so remarkably amazing in her work, she now has an extremely successful career of her own, working for such clients as Penguin Books, The New York Times, Tiffany & Co., OXFAM America, McSweeney’s, American Express, Target, Victoria’s Secret, Chronicle Books, Nike, and Samsung, to name a few!

Her description of the project, "12 Days of Christmas," from her website:

"This was a personal project that I sent out as a promo in the winter of 2006. It was a set of twelve postcards, each illustrating one of the twelve days of Christmas. They were all held together with a belly band stating "Happy Holidays" in hand-lettering."

I LOVE this project. Her illustration skills as well as her cleverness and sense of humor shine through so brightly. It's just lovely! So fun and beautiful! I love the way she illustrates animals, and I'm really drawn to the "cut-out-paper" look of this style. Everything is so well thought-out and crafted from the big picture down to the smallest details.

I'll be writing a lot more about Jessica and sharing her work. Stay tuned!

Erik Marinovich... Consider me wowed!

I'm looking for the holy grail of lettering.
Well, maybe there isn't just one!

Check out Erik Marinovich, an absolutely amazing letterer. And prolific! And extremely successful! I'm thoroughly impressed.

This is his client list:

Nike
Target
Google
Hilton
Sonos
Sharpie
Facebook
Criterion Collection
Ford Motor Company
New York Times
Mohawk Fine Papers
Wired Magazine
Nescafé
Mastercard
Chronicle Books
New York Magazine
Sephora
YBCA
Bloomberg Businessweek
Gap
Almanac Beer Co.
DwellStudio
TripIt
Lincoln Motor Company
Woman's Day Magazine
Converse
Maxim Magazine
Toronto Life
Seattle Met
Malibu Rum
Absolut Vodka
Newsweek
Metropolis Magazine
Graniph Tshirt Store
Dockers Air Canada
Holy cow!

And his bio paragraph:

Erik Marinovich is a San Francisco based lettering artist and designer, and is a co-founder of Friends of Type. Since 2009 he has drawn letters, logos and type for nice folks like: Nike, Target, Google, Hilton, Facebook, Sonos, Sharpie, The Criterion Collection, Air Canada, Gap, Ford Motor Company. In 2012 he co-founded Title Case, a creative work space that conducts workshops and lectures. Between client work, teaching and side-projects, you’ll find him on the road promoting Keep Fresh Stay Rad and Let’s Go Letter Hunting, two new releases from Friends of Type published by Princeton Architectural Press.

This guy is so f***ing good!

Here is just one of his pieces that I love. It is one in a series of his custom handlettered pieces for the following:

"Every month at Friends of Type we invite a guest designer or illustrator to take over the site and create work for an entire week, we call it ‘Guest Post’r’. To kick off their week of work, we introduce them with a custom headline and interview. This is a sampling of the headlines that I’ve created over the past year. All of the typography in this series is custom handlettered."

Everything about this is so interesting and aesthetically pleasing to me. The whole thing is created out of arrows of different types. "Jeff Rogers" is a little hard to make out at first, but this is really a fine piece of art. The design is so nicely balanced; I love the colors; the texture and shading are wonderful. I want to know how he created this. 

If you like this, check out the rest of the series: Erik Marinovich's Friends of Type Guest Contributor Series.

For me, delving into the work of other letterers—which I'm ashamed to admit that I've done very little of this last year—is like stepping into a wardrobe and coming out the other side in Narnia (without the dangerous stuff)! I think I'm going to be absolutely amazed at what is out there, especially since lettering is the new black.

(Bio, client list, image, and description of the series all come from Erik's website: www.erikmarinovich.com.)