The Concept

The idea to turn this ampersand (which was designed from scratch to represent the Ugmonk Premium Line) into a true art piece came about as a part of Ugmonk’s first exclusive art show at D-Structure in San Francisco. Though the ampersand wasn’t for sale at that time, several people showed an interest in having such a unique piece as part of their own home or studio decor.

Behind The Scenes

Creating each ampersand is an intricate process. We thought you might enjoy seeing them come to life as they are crafted right here in Downingtown, PA, so we filmed some behind the scenes footage. Each ampersand is custom cut, sanded, hand-stained and laquered, and shipped in custom packaging to assure safe delivery.

Watch the video below or click here if you are having trouble viewing.

This initial relase includes only 15 pieces and there’s no place else in the world to secure your very own Ugmonk Premium Ampersand other than the Ugmonk Shop.

Here are some of my initial thumbnail sketches and ideas. There were things that I’d like about some of these concepts but none of them seemed to hit the mark right away.

I first experimented with simple hand-drawn type and playing around some extreme width variation for each word. While I liked the simplicity, this composition was putting too much emphasis on the “I” which was not where I wanted the focus of the message to be.

I continued to push my ideas around a little more.

Next I tried a custom script. While there were some interesting things happening with this, the script just didn’t seem to fit this concept and I was struggling with the flow of the letters and overall balance.

The finished version is a actually combination of several of my original ideas. I kept the word “Better” in a simplified script style so that it would remain the focal point of the design. I still liked the idea of varying weights for each word so I used two different styles for “than I” and “deserve.” This created a solid base shape and anchored the composition.

Then I scanned all of the hand-drawn type and did some minor cleanup and adjustments in Photoshop. Rather than precisely trace the letters in Illustrator, I left small imperfections and irregularities to keep the organic hand-drawn qualities of the design.

Finally, I chose a color scheme and shirt material that I would also add to the organic “vintage” style of the design. Though the process took a bit longer on this one, I’m really happy with the finished result.

If you want to read more about my design process check out this post on how I created There’s More To Life.

In order to get the shadow effect for the overlapping letters, the shading had to be converted to halftones. While gradients can look great on-screen, they can’t be screen printed as is and must be converted into tiny dot patterns to creates the same shading effect. If you want a more technical explanation of halftones you can read more here. You might be surprised with how many things you use everyday are printed with halftones. Just take a closer look at a cereal box or newspaper.

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.

]]> http://www.ugmonk.com/index.php/2009/12/01/ugmonk-behind-the-scenes/feed/ 30 http://www.ugmonk.com/index.php/2009/10/15/typophile-film-festival-5-opening-titles/ http://www.ugmonk.com/index.php/2009/10/15/typophile-film-festival-5-opening-titles/#comments Fri, 16 Oct 2009 01:28:33 +0000 Jeff http://www.ugmonk.com/index.php/?p=1373 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.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

(via Flavorwire.com)

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