Category Archives: type

till the stars fall from the sky {for you and I}

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Jim Morrison Quote

Nobody says it better than Jim Morrison.

No matter where my musical tastes take me, there are certain bands I always find my way back to. The Doors are one of them. Dark. Moody. Dreamy. Poetic. The perfect soundtrack for those late night, head clearing drives to nowhere, with no other company but the music. Those long solo drives used to be a huge outlet for me when I just needed to get away from everything.

There were times that I drove all the way to Wisconsin or even Iowa, through miles and miles of farmland and darkness, with no intention as to where I was going to end up. The destination wasn’t really the focus, it was just the act of being alone in my head, out of the suburbs and beneath a canopy of stars.

With the price of gas now, going on a three-hour road trip to nowhere seems a lot less appealing, but when I could fill up my gas tank for twenty bucks it was some of the best stress relief money could buy. In retrospect, thinking back to how horrible and unreliable a lot of my former cars were, it’s a miracle that I never ended up broken down and stranded on the side of the road two hours away from home.

Moonlight-Drive

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to do a couple of really simple lyric illustrations, a bit outside of my usual style. The idea for the first one had been bouncing around my head for a while, and after I finished it the other picture came together in a few minutes. I think they’re kind of in the same vein, mood-wise.

Weird random fact of the day: did you know that the keyboards in the song “Moonlight Drive” were recorded normally, then played back in reverse to get that interesting sound effect? I learned that reading Ray Manzarek’s memoir “Light My Fire: My Life With the Doors.” I would definitely recommend it if you’re a doors fan, or have any interest in the 60′s counter-culture. It’s a great read.

Do you have any go-to bands for when you just need to clear your head? What are they?

Playing with Typography {Matt Foley, Motivational Speaker}

typography project illustrating quotes from matt moley motivational speaker sketch

It’s been a while since I worked on a typography project. I hate to get rusty, so what better to practice with than the inspirational words of Matt Foley, motivational speaker?

Oh man, I just had to watch the video again. It never gets old. This sketch has to be one of the all time best things ever to come out of Saturday night live. Chris Farley was so funny it’s ridiculous. And David Spade and Christina Applegate trying to not crack up on camera? Priceless.

Please tell me you’ve seen it. If not, click here…unless you want me to die a little inside.

Get Your Geek On {I won’t tell}

I had a nice little drive this morning for kind of a stupid reason. My daughter had to be at school early today, and me being me, I hit the snooze button a few too many times. Although we managed to get her there on time, I left the house in pajama pants, with unbrushed hair and raccoon eyes from forgetting to wash off my mascara before I went to bed. Also, we couldn’t find the baby’s shoes, so we left without them. I thought, screw it, I’m going to be home in five minutes anyway.

Except that the weather was sunny, breezy, deliciously warm, and I started thinking that iced coffee sounded pretty fantastic. Rather than drive home, make myself look human, then head to the Starbuck’s five minutes away, I drove fifteen minutes out of my way to one with a drive thru. I mean, even if I got myself looking presentable, I still had the baby with me. For all the squirming and squiggling she puts up getting in and out of her car seat, going the drive thru route was probably actually a time saver. Mom logic. Gotta love it.

Anywhooooooo……I was listening to the radio (because as usual, I forgot to charge my iPod) and they started talking about how today is Geek Pride Day. I was unaware that this existed, but if you click the link it takes you to Wikipedia which will assure you that it is indeed a real thing. Anyway, they were talking about how the things that will categorize people as dorky when they’re younger (i.e. high school and everything before) are actually the same things that create some really awesome and interesting adults. Think about some of the most interesting people you know. I bet they’re pretty passionately geeky about a thing or two. After all, what’s geekiness but raw unbridled excitement about something, without regard to how “cool” other people think it is? There are all kinds of geeks; art geeks, tech geeks, music geeks, photography geeks, movie geeks, book geeks…they all have ridiculous amounts of enthusiasm about their topic of choice. And isn’t that awesome? I think it is. I love that we get older and stop caring about what people think of us, and instead care about the things that excite us. And if it’s not the coolest thing on the planet…oh well. If someone can volley Futurama quotes back and forth with me and sing the entire Monorail song from The Simpsons, or launch into an excited ten minute explaination when I ask a simple computer question…they’re all right in my book.

Get your geek on, my friends.

What do YOU get geekishly excited about?

The Mind is its Own Place {illustrated quote}

illustrated John Milton quote on sunset backgroundI came across this quote yesterday morning, and it’s been bouncing around my head ever since. Life really is as wonderful or horrible as you make it out to be in your mind. Such things are especially important to remember on a day that your toddler somehow gets her hands on one of your micron pens and scribbles all over the drawing you’ve been painstakingly coloring for the last couple of weeks. Not that anyone in this house would be stupid enough to leave her micron pens and aforementioned drawing unattended. Sigh.

I’m probably making it out to be worse than it is, and I’m hoping that once it’s all colored that will hide most of the scribbles, but from now on that scribble is going to be all I see every time I look at it.

Oh well. I guess we can look toward Heaven and call it our first ever Mommy-daughter collaboration.

smilings my favorite!

illustrated quote from the movie ElfI’m jumping on the Christmas bandwagon and doing another Christmas picture. I was driving in the car this morning, thinking about what kind of illustration I wanted to do next (yup, those are the kinds of things I think about…don’t judge me) and I thought it would be fun to do something from a Christmas movie, seeing as it’s only two days away. Have I mentioned I don’t have all of my shopping done? Yikes! I’ve never been this behind before… hopefully I’ll make it in and out of the stores unscathed.

So…back to Christmas movies. I’m kind of picky about them. I dislike sappiness, so that disqualifies a lot of them. I love the original animated Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Store Christmas. I love the old cheesy stop motion Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. I really love The Nightmare Before Christmas (although, is that really a Christmas movie? Doesn’t matter. We have lots of Jack and Sally ornaments on our tree.) And finally, I love the movie Elf, which I actually just introduced my daughter to this year. They keep playing it on tv, and I think at this point we’ve watched it four or five times.

I’m taking a break until after the holiday. Merry Christmas to you and yours!

the time has come {the walrus and the carpenter}

illustrated quote from the walrus and the carpenter

I’m on a roll! I just finished my third illustrated quote in three days. Do you recognize this one? It’s from Alice in Wonderland, when Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum tell the story of the Walrus and the Carpenter. Although I can’t read it without automatically hearing the music from the song in the Disney version.

the dude {abides}

illustrated quote from the movie The Big Lebowski I had a blast creating this. I love, love, LOVE this movie. If you can quote this movie then you and I will get along just fine.

When I decided I wanted to illustrate another quote, this one immediately popped into my head. The Big Lebowski has SO many quotable lines, but I settled on this one mostly because it was nice and long, which gave me more content to play with. “This aggression will not stand!” and “that’s just, like, your opinion man” would have been fun too. And how can you forget “CAREFUL man, there’s a beverage here!” (TOLD you I love this movie).

By the way, did you know there’s an actual Lebowski Fest? Oh yes, there is, and apparently 2012 is its 10th Anniversary. According to their website, it involves movie screenings, bowling, and White Russians. How can you go wrong?

imagination > knowledge

illustrated einstein quote

I love illustrated quotes. I was poking around the web one day and came across a bunch of beautifully done ones over on Pretty Zoo, which inspired me to illustrate some new ones of my own. Playing with type has never been my favorite part of the design process (that place in my heart is reserved for ♥ color ♥) , so every once in a while I like to try to bulk up my skills a little by attempting to illustrate a quote, a song lyric, or a line from a movie (yes…for fun. Once again, my geekiness shines through).

I’m also a bit of a nerd for infographics. I love them. Probably because of my passionate love of useless random facts. I’ve wanted to attempt one forever, but I haven’t quite figured out what the subject should be. It’ll probably pop into my head one day when I’m zooming down the highway at 65 mph with an uncharged phone and no pen to record the idea. The Oatmeal did a couple of hilarious infographics about coffee and beer, which would have been fun topics, but I want to do someone new. One of the best ones I’ve even seen is What Are the Odds? It’s a mind-bender for sure.

What I ended up with is this weird hybridization of a quote done in an infographic style. I’ve always liked this quote a lot. There’s another great Einstein quote I like that says  “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid” but I’ve seen too many other illustrations of that one. I wanted to do something different. If you search Einstein quotes, there’s a huge selection of good ones. I mean, he was a brilliant man. Of course he would have some insightful things to say.

beer can with headphones attached

beer before liquor, never been sicker….

screen shot of Drinkify home page I have a new favorite thing ever.

Well, maybe not ever, because it’s competing with things like nachos and Chuck Taylors and The Usual Suspects and whatnot, but it’s still pretty cool.

As you might or might not know, I have this huge obsession with StumbleUpon. Seriously, if I don’t watch myself I’ll lose hours of my life to it. I’ve been feeling rather bored and uninspired and generally gross for the last couple days (I’m placing full blame on the weather. One of our favorite pastimes in Chicago is bitching about the weather, and we’ve reached that time of year when it’s starting to get COLD, and you pretty much know you’re going to be miserable and freezing for at least the next five months) so to try and brighten my surly mood a little I decided to play on StumbleUpon for a while and maybe discover a new artist or desert recipe or weird picture of outer space or mansion made entirely of Legos. Whatever, really. And Drinkify kept popping up. Then I’m checking out Glass and Sable today, and see another post about it. Too funny.

Basically, it’s the most brilliantly simple concept ever. What drink best goes with the music you’re listening to?

Just for fun, I’ll share my boozy suggestions with you using the most recently played artists from my ipod. Also, my go-to drink is rum and coke, which fails to appear anywhere on the list. It kinds of cracks me up.

beer can with headphones attachedThe Lawrence Arms / PBR
The Falcon / 1 bottle fortified wine
The Doors / LSD
Tiger Army / Maker’s Mark Bourbon / 2 oz. Worcestershire sauce
Operation Ivy/ 10 oz sloe gin
Alkaline Trio / 10 oz Southern Comfort
The Pixies/ PBR
Janes Addiction / PBR
The Tossers / 8 oz. Woodford Reserve Bourbon / 8 oz. Red Bull
Deftones / PBR
The Riverboat Gamblers / PBR
Social Distortion / 1 oz. Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey / 1 oz. lemon sour /1 oz. Pineapple juice

According to this site Pabst Blue Ribbon should be sponsoring my ipod.  Apparently I should be drinking it right now. For breakfast. My boyfriend used to know a place where you could get a breakfast special of a PBR, tater tots and a corn-dog for $2.00 or something. Hmmm……

Also, I’d like to argue that if you’re listening to the Tossers you should be drinking Guinness.

That is all.

mutual weirdness is the best kind


Typography was never my greatest love in design school. I always kind of looked at it as a necessary evil. Sure, I love fonts. I love scrolling though big fat lists of fonts trying to find the coolest ones, and I have an unhealthy amount of grunge fonts installed on my home computer. The thing is, the coolest LOOKING font’s aren’t always the BEST ones to use. In fact, you generally have to use them extremely sparingly or else your design ends up looking like a hot mess. And fine tuning leading, kearning, tracking….{yawn}….puts me to sleep.

I think you either love type, or you don’t. I fall into the latter category. I’m definitely an image sort of girl.

In spite of this, I really admire people that have a way with type. People that can illustrate whole poems, lyrics, phrases, stories, and really create an emotion using nothing but typography. Every once in a while I’ll get the urge to try and illustrate something myself. A phrase, a song lyric, a quote. I want to be able to capture it visually, using only words. It’s tricky. Like I said, I’m not the best at typography. But…I took a stab at it anyway and tried to illustrate one of my favorite quotes ever (above). Enjoy.