MAKING A COLOUR PALETTE

Another illustrative and design-y post for you! I did a livestream at work the other day, which involved me drawing and coloring-in on Photoshop. One of the questions that the audience asked was “how did you get them colors up” and so my curious friend, I shall show you.

CREATIVE BOOKS I REACHED FOR @ UNI

It’s that time of the year again where uni is about to begin. Whether you are starting freshers, or are ready to tackle your final year, it’s an exciting time and one in which we should get stocked up on our supplies! This post covers some incredible books. They have helped me out in my uni days studying a creative course and hopefully they can help you out too!

ON MY SHELF: HOT DOG TASTE TEST

Welcome to a new series my many readers (a.k.a. my mother). The ‘On My Shelf’ tag will consist of me nattering on about pretty pages and bitchin’ books (see what I did there?). So whenever my eyes land on a beautifully executed read, I shall showcase it here! First off, it’s Lisa Hanawalt’s ‘Hot Dog Taste Test’.

A DAY AT THE TATE MODERN

Before we begin I bet you’re wondering “ooh Amy that header image is a lil’ different than what you normally do” and you are very much correct my friend. You see, I love graphic design but seem to have been focusing primarily on my illustration work for the time being. So today I felt like branching out and playing around a bit, get my old designery juices flowing you know? Aye, so there we go, this blog is a playground for me and I hope you enjoy what develops!

To the post – A last minute family trip took us to London for the day. We had heard that the Tate Modern had a re-vamp and thus we headed on over to see what the old power station had to offer. I personally love the Tate; it’s a mixture of weird and wonderful with the gems in-between. So here's what we walked around and scratched our heads about.

FROM PENCIL TO PRINT

I have been plotting this print for about a year now and finally I have bought it to life! It was for my friend Becca’s 21^st, and I knew a year ago that I was going to make her a cute illustration for her room. She likes pink and cosmetics so I put two and two together. For this journey I thought I would take you along with me, from A to B, pencil to print. So this post is a nice little nosey into how I make an idea come to life!

A PEEK INTO MY SKETCHBOOKS

Sketchbooks are lovely little insights into the mind of a creative. I find it exciting when you see the initial ideas and doodles that have evolved into the final piece that we often show off. But why not show off our battered, dog eared and jam-packed pages? Below are some of my sketchbooks that have carried me through my final year of university. You may recognize an illustration or two that has turned into something more. Have a good old scroll through!

A Big Chunk Of Land: An Illustrative Insider

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Nice Corners Of The Internet

A Flick Through Lucky Peach Magazine

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I love a fun and vibrant publication, and Lucky Peach magazine delivers on all levels. Filled with foody goodness, articles on Mother Nature and well-executed editorial design, this magazine ticks all the right boxes.

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People often use the term “never judge a book by its cover” but how can you not in this case?! A brave black background coated with little veggies and animals entice you in, you want to turn the page, you need to know what awaits your eyes. The person responsible for our eye-feast is illustrator Stacy Rozich (pronounced “ROSE-ITCH” as stated in her Instagram bio) Her hand painted works are inspired by her travels and childhood memories, all whipped up with some culture and tradition.

The contents page. Okay so I’m going to let you in on a little secret, I love contents pages, and I love them even more if they are visually sound. The typographic hierarchy here is lovely; big page numbers accompanied with sans-serif bolded titles and a serif caption tie it all in. Plants circulate the page, in which illustrator Armando Veve is responsible - He’s the man for the job if you want two-tone, detailed images.

“Smells Like Green Spirit” nice catchy header, I like it. This article on plant smells (just read it okay) sets the scene for the layout of the articles to come. A neat 3 column grid with drop caps in a sans-serif font – as apposed to a serif which the body is made of, delivers a playful yet ordered feel to the articles. Also, check out that header typeface! I love it! It has a disorderly manner about it and I am digging it. This font is plastered all through this publication, but I have noticed that there are two versions of it. The header font’s style features a very circular counter for the letter “O”, yet the subheading’s style features more of a rounded rectangle shaped counter, like that of a running track. Enjoyable geometric illustrations by Raymond Biesinger.

This cute plant themed comic is composed over 5 spreads. It tells a sweet tale of a wife filling her new home with plants and maybe getting a bit carried away with it all. I happened to have already discovered the woman responsible for this doodly goodness a few months ago, she is Lisa Hanawalt, and loves to draw animals as apposed to humans. She is the co-producer and production designer of a Netflix series named “BoJack Horseman” which y’all should check out.

Many many CITRUS FRUITS. Colorful? Check. White space? Check. Am I salivating? Check. A lovely title spread for a lovely orange packed article. Oh and its that nice type again! (If anyone knows what it is, comment below, I need it in my font library)

With photography by Laura Braun (Check her work out, its kind of sedative and whimsical) this is a title spread to a BIG article on BIG veg. I appreciate the 2 images per page idea along with the BIG type that complements the theme of the piece.

“Happy Ending” I just really like the coloured header accompanied with the overlay of fruit. Also notice the sunset gradient applied on the subheading? Nice one Lucky Peach.

A grid demonstrating the stages of permissions drying out. Neat, good flow and an orange colour palette - a polite layout.

So many tasty recipes! This 5(.5) page spread contains dynamic and veg filled foods. The design of the recipe pages is somewhat unique. The information is not contained to one page per meal, they bleed over into the next with a colour segregating one from the other. Speaking of colour, a pastel palette is in play; yellow, green, blue and pink run through the recipes. Teeny illustrations by Helen Tseng are dotted between the text.

Psychedelic meets traditional with Matt Panuska’s illustration style. He’s also created a groovy title piece for this article to accompany his editorial pieces.

Notice the switch in the letter “O”, this demonstrates the two versions I stated above.  A hefty title expands over the two pages, along with Rachel Levit’s work. All is tied together with the same width of title and image.

This is the introduction to the Blood Sugar article, and an introduction it is to. Drop caps are applied to the first two words, which follows with a body of the same font in a smaller point size. One thing this magazine does well is its typography; the variants of sizes and font style all work when normally, they shouldn’t. I salute ye, editorial team.

Now we come to some adventurous ice cream recipes! The actual ice cream is paired with its main ingredient in the articles photography, adding some quirk.

A lively leafy type, with a lively leafy banner, lovely.

Ditching the white page for a bit of black, this tofu article has an oriental feel. Instead of going for a conventionally white type on black, the headers are in yellow that matches the palette of the photographs.

In the details...

The small illustrations by Helen Tseng

I hope you have enjoyed my little review as much as I enjoyed reading the magazine!

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Check out Lucky Peach here!

All opinions and views are my own.

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