Quaruntine Projects

[quaruntineprojects]

Animal Logos - Sloth

Knowing that the logo would be overwhelmed by many overlapping shapes, I was up for the challenge having gained confidence from designing the peacock logo. 

Firstly I figured out how to design the body and from there I moved onto the complex part of the design which was the face. I wouldn’t say it was difficult but like I said at the beginning, the overlapping shapes can be a bit too much. 

Initially the sloth’s eyes were open and it also had a very simple smiling mouth. The eyes looked kind of scary so tried to see what they would looked like closed, and in fact they looked a lot more friendlier and peaceful. Since the sloth is sleeping I got rid of the smiling mouth, and it made it look even calmer.

With the angled tree branch the opportunity arose to add some text. A lot of thought and sleepless nights went into deciding what to write. The text version I could see as being the logo of a clothing brand or a coffee shop, either way I love this logo. 

[quaruntineprojects]

Animal Logos - Peacock

The most elegant logo from the series in my view. I found a great reference picture which made my job a lot easier to a degree.

Forming the body of the peacock wasn’t too difficult but where the challenge came was from the feathered area. I had to figure out a style in which to design the feathers, and make a choice of how many to show in order to make it seem like a bunch. As I made a choice from the beginning to have the logo in the shape of a circle, I put a circle within a circle and repeated this pattern in order to create my guidelines for the feathers. This whole process took a lot of time, head scratches and calculations but the result turned out great.

As you can see from the construction picture, the ends of the feathers were created from circles and triangles. Towards the end of the overall design I decided to round off all the edges in order to create a very smooth looking design. The colours choices were made to lift the elegance aspect. 

The amount of shapes used for the logo were overwhelming at times, and designing in such a manner I have honestly struggled with in the past. This logo was definitely a great learning curve and it’s a skill which I immediately put into practice in my next animal logo design.

[quaruntineprojects]

Animal Logos - Giraffe 

With this logo it was initially tricky to figure out how to make the nose / mouth area look simple by using basic shapes.

Once I saw that the overall shape of the logo would be in the form of a triangle everything started to fall into place. Using this shape I created two main aspects of the design, the nose / mouth area and the ears.

This design was more about deciding which sections of the giraffe’s face to eliminate in order to still make it recognisable. 

[quaruntineprojects]

Animal Logos - Monkey

On one of the days I was in the mood to design a simple logo. 

I had seen many animal logos on Pinterest where the designer created the logo using simple geometric shapes and a great reference picture. 

This was the first one I created as I like monkeys but there’s a funny story that always comes to mind. During a zoo trip with my secondary school, one of the kids decided to spit at a monkey (idiot kid), guess what the monkey did? It spat back! We were all in stitches and couldn’t stop laughing. So ever since I have admired monkeys for being able to stick up for themselves but in a hilarious manner.

Back to the logo, I kept it simple as possible and have included a construction picture of how it was created so hopefully anyone reading this post can understand it and possibly have a go at designing one. There’s also a text version as I wanted to try it out. The flow of the text with the shape of the logo was great and it could equally work under the logo too. 

As I was happy with the outcome I decided to create a series of these simple animal logos but wanted to get suggestions for which animals to base the designs on. I created a story post on my Instagram account asking people and the next posts will reveal which animals I chose. 

[quaruntineprojects]

Baking Round 3

The last sponge cake I made. I stuck to the flat baking tray as it’s easier to bake in it plus cutting smaller square pieces makes it look you’ve made loads. 

Now that I feel comfortable making a simple sponge cake, it’s time to try and bake something else. Stay tuned! 

[quaruntineprojects]

Baking Round 2

This time I moved on from the trusted flat baking tray and tried the same recipe as the previous cake in a, wait for it, LOAF TIN! 

Again to my surprise the cake looked great, but on the inside it was a little undercooked. That’s why you won’t get a picture of the cake sliced up. But come on, look at the exterior of the cake! Oooooo 

[quaruntineprojects]

Cake Boss (not me, just a show I watch)

I love watching some cooking shows and weirdly find them therapeutic. Baking itself is quite relaxing and considering the times we are facing, I thought I’ll have a go at it. 

I have baked in the past once or twice but wanted to try and actually get good at it and bake consistently. Where do I start? My parents suggested a simple sponge cake so that’s what I did.

To all of our surprise the first cake actually turned out great. The second one not so much hence why I’ve only included one cake picture. 

Expect some more cake pictures in the next few posts. 

[quaruntineprojects]

Live Drawing Session 2 (put into practice)

My second post showed the drawing session which was about drawing various names in many lettering styles. 

I truly admired the styles that Stefan came up with so in order to learn from the class I decided to recreate the lettering styles using the word ‘Letters’. You’re probably thinking ‘woah!’ a lot of thought went into that, but it actually did. These are the things I wanted to improve when lettering: 

kerning ‘L’ with another letter

having the same letter together 

draw ‘R’ in various styles

draw the annoying but beautiful ‘S’

So the word ‘Lettering’ was great to practice with, plus the irony is cool. 

What I gathered from this practice session is that I need to improve my serifs and that’s something I have been working on. With sans serif I believe I’m comfortable with but can always improve. Lettering doesn’t have to be serif, sans serif, script etc, it can be made up of crazy things such as pacman looking geometric shapes, round - bubbly letters and letters within a 3D box.

[quaruntineprojects]

Live Drawing Session 3 - Stefan Kunz

This was a very informative session as it was on the subject of drawing every letter in the alphabet. 

The session was in collaboration with Ian Barnard (check him out on Instagram) another great lettering artist. 

Very valuable information was shared on how to draw each letter. The letter ‘S’ has always been a notorious letter for being difficult to draw but two tips were shared that make it a lot more simpler now. 

Either, draw the number eight in block form consisting of four ovals and create the s within. The other option is to draw four diagonal lines and connect them. 

These tips I will definitely remember, check out the video and learn from the two greats of lettering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBgUWp5Bxbw&list=PLNE3lf5mSMALgCBRETAVjr35rYlfruI4d&index=6

[quaruntineprojects]

Live Drawing Session 2 - Stefan Kunz

This sessions entailed of drawing the name of Stefan’s Patreon subscribers in various styles. This was an awesome exercise as it’s a great of learning new lettering styles. 

As you can see I did substitute some names with random words, just for the fun of it (actually I didn’t want my mum to question me, ‘who’s that?’). 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnaXJqPICBw&list=PLNE3lf5mSMALgCBRETAVjr35rYlfruI4d&index=10

[quaruntineprojects]

Live Drawing Session 1 - Stefan Kunz

When quarantine hit I was honestly clueless with what to do. I am a Graphic Design graduate and have also been creative since I was a kid. So having all this free time I knew improving and developing new skills / techniques would be great for myself. 

These first few posts will be about a lettering artist who I truly look up to named Stefan Kunz (check him out on Instagram and YouTube!). He was going to start these live Youtube drawing sessions in order to help people get through this difficult time by being creative.

What you see above is the first session which entailed of doodling within a letter. I chose ‘A’ due to my first initial plus it’s my favourite letter. 

The outcome looks great and it’s a style I would like to develop on. The doodles within the A are mostly what Stefan was drawing but also added some of my own icons. I used to wonder how artist come up with icons for such illustrations and now I know :) 

This was the drawing session, have a go for yourself!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7WukhHRNbs&list=PLNE3lf5mSMALgCBRETAVjr35rYlfruI4d&index=12