Category: illustration

Venue Sketch Save the Date Coasters

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It’s been a busy year for wedding projects, which means it’s been a terrible year for posting about them! One of the most popular projects in 2018 was save the date coasters featuring a custom venue sketch. It’s so fun to look back over a few of my favorites to see how my skills have improved and aesthetic has changed over the last 12 months. For each of these projects, I hand-drew the venue and supporting illustrations, designed the coaster and hand-printed the coasters on my antique letterpress.

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Jessie got in touch in late 2017 about their destination wedding the following summer (smart bride!). She wanted their Belgian venue to feature prominently on both their save the date coasters and invitations, along with hops vines to give guests a head’s up about all the beer they would be drinking!

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Rosie and Dan are getting married in just a few months at an amazing European castle. There were so many tiny details in their magnificent venue, the challenge here was simplifying the sketch to into outlines while keeping the spirit of the castle.

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Mary and Joey are getting married at Milwaukee’s historic Pabst Brewery—so of course a coaster was the perfect way to tell guests to save the date! I love that they chose such a dynamic angle for their venue sketch—not only is it fun for me to do something a little different, it shows off the unique architecture of the structure. They had seen the hops design on Jack & Jessie’s coasters and wanted to incorporate that as well. I’m also completely obsessed with the pointed pen calligraphy font I used to typeset their names!

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And finally, I just finished printing Will & Jubilee’s festive coasters for their Pennsylvania wedding next year. They are getting hitched at the historic Phoenixville Foundry, a truly statuesque venue. Will asked if I could eliminate some of the extraneous details to focus on the building itself, to which I happily obliged!

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An Extra Special Watercolor Wedding Map

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Lucia and Curtis had purchased their wedding invitations from a popular website, but wanted to add a custom map to encourage their guests to explore some of their favorite places during their wedding weekend. I worked with the groom’s mom to create this special piece, featuring hand-painted watercolor illustrations of the wedding venue, his hometown and some of the spectacular natural features of the area. It is above and beyond any of the maps I’ve designed previously, but I think it was well worth the effort!

Echo the Owl

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I’m so excited to finally reveal my latest project for PCHA! Earlier this year, they asked if I could come up with a child-friendly mascot for the organization—and they had settled on the idea of an owl. They wanted him to be cute and soft, restricted to just a few colors, and include the PCHA logo. I illustrated a few options, incorporating the logo of course, but also using the curves of the heart to inform the forms of the owl’s body, you’ll notice it in the beak and wings especially. After a few tweaks, we had this little guy finalized! After a contest was held to name him, I’d like to introduce: Echo!

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While he’s being used in various collateral (I even added sneakers in one iteration, so he could represent a 5k!), the most exciting version of Echo is that he now exists in 3D! A company took my illustration and brought it to life as a squishy stuffed animal. Several thousand of them have been distributed to children affected by CHD to comfort them while undergoing the barrage of surgeries and treatments that typically follow a diagnosis.

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Brittani & Peter’s Rustic Montana Wedding

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Brittani and Peter got married today in rural Montana and I could not be more excited to share their invitations! Inspired by a previous custom project of mine, Brittani and I incorporated details specific to the couple to create a suite that truly represented them and their big day.

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My favorite details are the unique watercolor touches, especially on the reverse of the main invitation card (it’s the first thing guests will see when they take them out of the envelope) and the RSVP. How great is that cow?!

Propeller Health Technical Illustrations

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Some designers find technical illustrations dull and without style, but to me they present a unique challenge. For Propeller Health‘s User Guide, a one point line needed to represent a three-dimensional object and demonstrate how the device worked to both children and adults. Working from both photographs and previous illustrations, I created clear imagery that was consistent throughout the 24-page black and white booklet.

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Outback Therapeutic Expeditions Token Illustrations

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Outback Therapeutic Expeditions is a wilderness therapy company based in Utah. Many of their programs employ an elaborate language of symbols inspired by Australian Aborigine artwork. When one of the counselors was creating the framework for a new program launching this fall, he asked me to create the symbology for it. Based on his sketches and descriptions, I created new vector-based symbols and shapes for tokens the students earn as they move through the program.