BonFX

Typography & Graphic Design Blog

50 Sketches from a Graphic Designer

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Drawing is fundamental to graphic design. Habitual drawing increases the skills of logo designers, page layout designers, and typographers alike. When a designer “makes do” by not sketching on a routine basis, the designer in some ways in shortchanging his or herself. Yes, designers absorb a lot of information from other designers and can “get by” by in the appropriate sense copying the great work of others. But, as some point, all the great design work we should and do borrow from, comes from the hard work of some designer with a good foundation in drawing. … [Read More]

Why do YOU sketch logos during the logo design process?

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I found this great post over at Under Consideration. There are a wealth of insightful comments readers have left about their own reasons for drawing and sketching. My own contribution is as follows:
“Drawing affords the path of least resistance from the conceptual visual idea to objective visual media. It has the least possible amount of psychological and physical overhead weighing down on and in on one’s inner muse.”
Jump over to the thread and leave your own thoughts…

Art House Co-Op’s “The Sketchbook Project” Moleskine sketches, pp08-09

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For pages 8-9, I introduce the character of the Mystical Dog King who holds in his hands, the potential of a green crayon. This is because I have found the topic of “It’s not easy being green” to be quite not-easy, and found free associating much easier. First, the dog character is something I came up with in the mid-nineties during colored pencil projects. He just popped up and said “Green is not easy, but I’m easy”. So I started there. The green crayon makes a cameo from page one…because it was easy. Mystery you say? A crown and some clouds with curtains. Yep. Mystery. … [Read More]

Art House Co-Op’s “The Sketchbook Project” Moleskine sketches, p04-07

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For pages 4-7, I decided I was going to compare and contrast graphite with charcoal. I’ve done a lot of graphite work over the years but never got a grasp of how to use charcoal in a way that approximated my graphite results. I’ve always wanted to sit down and do a piece in both mediums – one familiar and one not – and see what happened. The results are surprising! … [Read More]

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Douglas Bonneville has been a graphic designer since 1992 and has written about type here since 2009. BonFX is a blog about typography and design, and the books that came out of it.

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