I always enjoy reading about other designers’ processes so I thought I’d share a bit of the workflow of how I created the latest Ugmonk design “There’s More To Life.”

I’m usually hesitant to show the early sketches and rough concepts as they are not intended to be stand alone designs, but I do think it can be helpful to see how the design evolves and progresses throughout the creative process.

For this specific design I challenged myself to construct the typeface completely from scratch as opposed to just modifying an existing font. This forced me to really study each individual letterform and understand all of the subtle details that go into creating a typeface.

I normally start out by sketching my ideas with pen and paper. Many times I already have some initial ideas in my head and just need to see how they translate on paper. These early explorations are a critical part of the design process and should not be overlooked. The finished design may or may not resemble any of the initial sketches, but sketching is much less restrictive than going straight to the computer. Below are some of my early concepts:

After I have sketched out my ideas I will then either scan them or just use them for reference as I move to the computer. For this particular design, I went right into Adobe Illustrator and started constructing some of the concepts.

In these early stages I try not to get too bogged down with the exact details and proportions of the letters, but rather focus on how the letters are working together as a whole. This gives me a better idea of which direction to pursue and which concepts can be thrown out. Pictured below are few of the initial concepts that I was playing around with in Illustrator.

When designing tshirts it’s important to consider how the design will look when it is placed on the tshirt opposed to just a flat rectangle, so I will usually take a few of the concepts and do some quick comps of the design on a shirt. The easiest way to do this is to overlay the vector artwork on a photo of a blank shirt to see how the graphic relates to the tshirt format.

The next step is to eliminate the weaker concepts and begin to refine the stronger ones. As everything continues to come together, it’s important to start smoothing out any rough transitions and look at the overall spatial relationships. This involves zooming in and moving individual points around to unify the composition. As you can see below, the file is still pretty messy but the forms are starting to take shape. At this point I usually run my ideas by some friends and other designers to get some general feedback to help me decide on a final direction.

The final step is the most tedious part of the whole process: tweaking, tweaking and more tweaking. There’s really no secret to this step, it just requires a lot of patience and attention to detail. After all of the letters have been cleaned up, I will delete any stray points and extra shapes that may be floating off to the side. Below you see the finished vector file that is ready to be sent to the printer and be prepared for screen printing.

This is a just a brief glimpse into my design process, but I hope it’s been interesting and helpful to see how my ideas develop. If you have specific questions feel free to leave a comment below.

And don’t forget, this shirt is part of our Ugmonk Gives Back charity drive.  Purchase it over at the Ugmonk shop.

Awesome opening titles for the Typophile Film Festival created by BYU design students. The thing that makes this animation even better is that everything in the film is real and there was no CG used. Sure this could have been produced digitally with lots of special effects, but there is something about using real materials and photography that cannot be replicated. The way the materials react with each other and the slight imperfections of the objects all add to the rich viewing experience. Looks like it would have been a ton of fun to work on as well. Read the full story here.

Awesome work by photographer Bela Borsodi. By combining everyday objects and precise angles, he creates visually stunning compositions that form giant letterforms. My personal favorite is definitely that uppercase ‘A’ in the first photo below.

(via Flavorwire.com)

Rhett Dashwood spent some time using Google Maps not to get directions, but to spot letter forms throughout his home state of Victoria, Australia. Such a clever idea!

For more info and the specific locations of each letter visit: http://rhettdashwood.com.au

Some really interesting work by Savas Ozay, a designer and illustrator from Istanbul, Turkey. I like his use of geometric forms and clean type treatments mixed with bold colors. My favorite piece of Savas’s is the Playing Cards. I’ve always thought it would be fun challenge to design a deck of playing cards in a purely typographic style, and as you can see below Savas has done this quite successfully.

Check out more of his work at www.savasozay.com

Amazing series of typographic tree sculptures created by artist Gordon Young and design studio Why Not Associates.

“The striking, cracked trees, 14 in all, are situated throughout the library building and are installed vertically, flush to the floor and ceiling to resemble supporting, structural pillars. Each tree is, in fact, a real oak trunk and displays carved passages of text from literature within the library, the typeface of each passage chosen carefully to suit the nature of the text – which is where Why Not Associates comes in.”

via CR Blog

Some amazing three dimensional typography by Karina Peterson. The letters are transformed into 3D sculptures which change depending on the angle they are viewed at.

Beautiful paper-cut illustrations by Yulia Brodskaya. It’s always interesting to see typography being explored in a new mediums and unique applications. Because these are actually crafted from paper and photographed, they have a nice sense of depth and dimension that is almost impossible to replicate digitally.

(via designboom)

New card game called “Type Trumps” just released by Face37. This is going on my Christmas list!

Creative Review:

Rick Banks, has created a set of Top Trumps style cards where classic typefaces are the subject matter – hence the name, Type Trumps. Each card is designed to make the most of the particular font it features, and typophiles will happily find such faces as Frankfurter, Times, Helvetica, Johnston Underground and Neu Alphabet in the pack. Type Trumps players can battle it out using such statistics as year of design, the amount of weights, cost etc to win their opponent’s cards. Banks has given each typeface a ‘rating’ score, a ‘legibility’ score and even a ’special power’.

(via Swiss Legacy)

Amazing typography by Nicolas André. Check out more of his inspiring work here.