Sketches: Zappp!

I'm still not sure how this is going to work out. This was one of those projects where I had nothing to work with but a title, and really not much more to go on than instinct. And that's great, that opens up lots of opportunity, but in this case it meant spending lots of time essentially working on spec, and given past experience, I was (or I should have been) hesitant to do that.

Most of the time was spent learning the ins and outs of Adobe Illustrator, which I've used off-and-on for more than a decade, but never enough to feel really, truly comfortable with it. (I used to use Freehand.) I think I have a better sense of it than I did (and I really don't have much choice at this point, I don't think I even have a copy of Freehand that still works), but it doesn't seem as intuitive.

I wasn't sure how I wanted to approach the "telescoping" shadow of the letters. I knew I wanted it to be subtle — in some cases, not even there — and organic, rather than mechanical, so that meant lots of tinkering to achieve just the effect I wanted. I don't know that I'm settled on this just yet (I think it may be too subtle), but I'm not sure I want to put more work into this without some confidence that the project will indeed go forward.

I s'pose it defeats the purpose when I show the cover before the sketch — but there really isn't all that much to show.


(And yes, that is indeed the same typeface I used on the cover of the last cover I designed, Egiziano Classic Black. I loves me a big ol' slab serif.)