So, How Was Your Day?
Breakfast:
Spinach, goat cheese, and red pepper egg white omelette. Rye toast with cream cheese & hot sauce. Sliced apples with cinnamon.
Lunch:
Peppered turkey & hard salami with swiss cheese, spinach, and yellow mustard on rye. Carrots and chipotle hummus.
Dinner:
Parmesan chicken sausage with garlic grilled green and yellow peppers in vodka sauce.
Morning ➛
6am wake-up alarm went off, the lady hit snooze twice. Get out of bed, somehow. Go for a quick half hour run around the Logan Square boulevard and jump in the shower. Pull Frannie (the pooch) and out bed and take her down to do her business while the lady makes breakfast. Freakin' delicious. Feed the pooch and gave her a good belly scrathin', she was still sleeping basically. Scooter off to MAKE. and grab coffee on the way. Iced coffee all day, errryday. Process email for an hour.
Noon ➛
Got right to work on art direction and concepts for an identity and branding project. The client, an electronic medical records company, is a bit on the 'corporate' side for what we normally do, but we took on the project because they wanted to interject some personality and higher-end design into the brand. Break for lunch. Check a few blogs and social media thing-a-ma-bobs; tumblr, twitter, dribbble, etc... After lunch I get sort of sleepy from that turkey and need to take a quick break from the studio, so I scooter down the street to get another iced coffee. Do the requested edits on a packaging design project. Some of the textures that we integrated into the design needed to be updated, so I actually get to get my hands dirty in the studio for a second. Scan, scan, scan. Luckily we have worked with this client for a long time, so it actually went quite swiftly. Done for the day. Scooter home.
Night ➛
Get home to snoring bulldog, she sleeps a lot. Take her down to do the dance, again. Get started making dinner with the lady. Take the usual after-dinner walk down to the Logan Square dog park. Frannie finally comes alive, she always loves hamming it up for the people we pass on the way and at the park. She didn't pay much attention to the other dogs though. I don't think she knows she is a dog. Get back to The Bungalow (that's what I call our little apartment) and settle in for the night. The lady turns on some trashy TV show, Gossip Girl I think. I can't watch that stuff, so I open up the laptop and tinker with a personal project of mine called Athlete Objects. I whip out the start of the 'Berry Sanders' character illustration. Head off to bed. Check a few tweets and FB for a bit to numb my mind before bed. The lady (as usually) is out cold as soon as her head hits the bed. Frannie is snoring hard bed side, puts me right to sleep. Zzzzzzzz.
Three Last Things…
1. What's up with this "lady" you keep referring to? Are you living with British royalty?
Not British, but close. She is very Irish. The 'lady' is my lady, Ms. Abby Wynne. She is the 'other half' of MAKE. and parent of Frannie (who I sometimes call little lady, confusing I know).
2. Your Athlete Objects site is faaantastic (Bird and Malone are great). How did you get linked up with ESPN?
Why thank you, glad you like it. It is a personal project that I have been tinkering around with for a couple years. It has started to get some press as of late, ESPN even commissioned a couple character illustrations.
3. Paul Rand once said, "It is important to use your hands, this is what distinguishes you from a cow or computer operator." Do you think this applies to design and illustration today?
Absolutely. Developing your hand-skills in super important. Computers are cool, but they should just be one tool in your tool belt.
Jesse lives in Chicago where he co-owns & operates MAKE., a Chicago-based design team, with Abby Wynne. readysetmake.com athleteobjects.com