Out of the funk and into the fire

As you have probably noticed, it’s been a bit of a deserted wastleland here so far this year. I was still in that creative funk I mentioned in my 2011 review post for most of January, and kind of depressed because of it, and instead of busting my ass and getting out of it, I was drowning myself in Skyrim.

At the beginning of February I was able to snap out of it. Things went from ‘eh’ to wicked-busy real fast, which is just what I needed – I am always better and more focused the more I have going on. The two most pressing things were a big illustration project with a deadline on the horizon and then my class at OCAC that started the beginning of the month, which has been really amazing and so much fun, but a monster to prep for.

Anyhow, since I’m back to actually being productive, I thought I’d go ahead and share some process. Here’s some of the stages for the back side of the map:

It’s a map of the city of San Jose, Costa Rica [duh. I guess it says it right on there] for the next ICANN conference that’s coming up. They saw the map I did at Powell’s, and wanted something similar, but with functional maps of the venue space on one side and the downtown area map for people attending the conference to use on the other side.

It was a pretty challenging project because of all the parts to think of and layout and actually drawing a concise map of a city. But in the end, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. Something that was interesting for me was that I ended up turning my handwriting into a font, a process that has mixed results. In the end, I don’t like it all, and would prefer to always hand letter things, and there is still a good amount of hand lettering mixed into the project. But I won’t deny the amount of time having my own font saved when typing up the street, restaurant, and location names and having to fix and rewrite them.

That’s it for now! I just wanted to share finishing up that big project. I’ll try to update more things that have been going on over the course of this coming week.

2 thoughts on “Out of the funk and into the fire

  1. it’s super helpful and reassuring to read about beating “the funk” as i’m in the process of digging myself out of a year+ long creative rut…
    your costa map sure is purdy! i’m curious about your font process, what program did you use?

  2. Hey, Cobb!

    Thanks! Yeah, it’s been tough. Well, I need to practice what I preach more, because instead of mulling about and feeling sorry for myself, what I needed to do was just do work – any work. I really think that the only way to get out of these funks is to work through it, no matter now hard it seems. Sometimes just doing something that you don’t do, just to get away from your routine really helps…hopefully, like taking a comics class.

    I used this website for the font: http://www.yourfonts.com/. Don’t do it right away, though… I’ll talk about it in class the pros and cons.

    Also, loved seeing your work on your website! I love your design stuff! Maybe you should do the cover for our zine…

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