Jazz Dance Poster

I was asked to make a poster for an event by Helsinki Traditional Jazz Dancers. I don't know much about jazz dance but sounded fun, so I decided to do it. I hadn't done any actual hand-made lettering for a while so I thought that could be the starting point of the poster.

I first made some pencil sketches which looked all right. Then there was a break in the work and I misplaced the original sketches, so I drew more different ones, inspired by a book of Doyald Young's work that I read at a friend's place. There was still missing a certain flow that I had in mind, so I tried lettering with a Pelikan ink, the lettering instrument actually being the plastic tube that is attached to the cap of the ink bottle. This took a little practice at first, but I managed to get the hang of it quite fast anyway. This produced some nice randomness that I wanted the text to have.

I actually thought I would letter all the texts by hand but that turned out to be a bit too big job for the schedule so I settled for a font that would contrast the handmadeness. The client was very happy with the poster, as were I. Nice job. Now I need some more ink to continue. The final poster is below.

I made a small postcard to promote the opening of a new website for Lucky's, a comic book shop in Vancouver, Canada. It's a nice little shop, we visited it this May while traveling there. The address is in the picture and you can also test the legibility of the text at the same time.

Office Lettering zine

I made a small office lettering -zine from the material on this blog. It's available this weekend from Helsinki Comics Festival small press area and later from somewhere else. I'll update the "later" part later. 20 pages, color.

Tattoo Dictionary in Tate Britain

I was asked to come to Tate Britain in London to make the Tattoo Dictionary. That's pretty nice, I'm not complaining. The show is on this friday evening (June 3rd), welcome if you're around! The photos from the event will go to flickr afterwards.

Street art festival logo proposal

I was recently asked if I could join an upcoming street art festival with my Tattoo Dictionary -project. Unfortunately I had prior commitments that same weekend, so I had to decline. This Monday one of the organizers asked if I could anyway help them out by designing a logo for the festival. I thought I could give it a shot since she said they liked my work. It was due on Friday so there wasn't really time to make multiple proposals.

I thought I'd start with the name of the festival (Suuri Katutaidetapahtuma, The Big Street Art Event in English) since I kind of like long words. I made a few sketches on paper on how the words should look and how they should be divided into lines. I was aiming for a roundish shape. I made a playful word shape with the lines from some letters continuing into others. The line is of uniform width, so the logo would only represent "street art style" and not try to illustrate it directly.

I sent the preliminary logo in for comments, but one of the organizers said it wasn't really what they were looking for. Which isn't really surprising since they didn't tell me what they were looking for. So they'll go on with something else then. But I was quite happy with this version so I'll share it here.

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Happy 2011! Here's another old lettering sample from the office era. "Retrospectives" were meetings where we looked at how things had gone on that "sprint". I'm starting to forget all this, which may be good. Anyway, they were held every two weeks, so I think I still have a lot of unposted lettering scans with the same theme. This reminds me of some sport logos for some reason.

I think I started making a vector version of this one, though I'm not sure where it is now. Maybe it was to check if this works well on a grid. I may post it later if I find it.

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It's been a while since I've uploaded an office lettering sample. This is of course because I don't have as many meetings as a freelancer. And if I do have some, I'm probably supposed to be an active participant, so I can't scribble too much. Oh well! I don't miss the job though.

I do have lots of unposted things from the previous job though, so I'll post them occasionally. And of course I will have some new lettering coming from notes in sketchbooks etc.

This one is old enough that I can't remember the details of it. We probably had a series of meetings on a same day so it was mostly listening to people talking all day long. This was made with felt-tip and ball-point pens, original size is about 13,5 x 8 cm.

Typographic Workshop

Sanna working on "Tipu"

I took part in a nice typography / lettering workshop on the weekend. The class was organized by Grafia (The Finnish association of graphic designers) and was taught by Mr. Sami Kortemäki of Underware fame.

The theme was "Make the ego bigger" and the assignment was to divide into pairs and make the other person's name into a logotype. I got paired with a friend from the university, Tuukka.

Tuukka's a very nice guy but I initially had some trouble with the double u's and the double k's in his name. But it's not his fault of course. I first tried to find some nice way to draw the letters to one line like in normal text, one result is below. The line from "T" to "u" was added later. Below the logotype are some attempts to handle the double letters in a more intesting way.

I was almost starting to work on the more finished version based on the image above, but then I did make one more sketch with the "uu" and "kk" on different lines. That seemed to work better so I continued in that direction. Next image shows some quick sketches on that idea. The initial and best version is the one that is underlined.

Below is a more finished version that is quite close to the final one.

The final-final drawing can be seen on the wall in the picture below, along with some other logotypes.

And finally there's the Official Photo with Tuukka and his new shiny logotype. Photo and layout by Sami Kortemäki.

Grafia

Sami Kortemäki / Underware

Bossa Nova

This is a headline lettering for a poster my friend requested for his presentation about Bossa Nova music. It was used together with some famous record covers.

The text consists of five separate lines forming the letters. I first drew this by hand to get the basic lines and their relations right, and then scanned it and made a vector version. The colors are of course the same as in the flag of Brazil. Each of the five lines has a separate gradient coloring to keep the look a bit more lively. There are some areas the curves could have been smoothed out a bit more but I like the look in general.

Sodankylä posters II

I had a few more poster-related photos left from Sodankylä, best to put them up too I guess.

The first photo above shows the window of Sodankylä's only permanent movie theatre, Lapinsuu, filled with festival posters. Usually we were supposed to remove the posters as soon as the showings were done, but the full window does look nice in my opinion. I only got to see one screening in Lapinsuu, though: Io sono l'amore. That was quite good. And with stylish title typography.

Another place where the posters were posted was in the fences around the festival area. The photo above is by the entrance to the food & beer tent.

This was our workspace. It was at the end of the festival office corridor, so we had a lot of people come in and ask for the office that they had just passed on the way to our tables. Perhaps we should have made some signs showing the office door.

Above is a small sign made for the doorway of a temporary cinema (which used to be the indoor sporting hall of a school).

And last is a view from the shore beside the festival HQ. It's not quite the midnight sun, but close. The photo was taken 15 minutes before midnight.

Kallion kulttuuriverkosto -logo

I live in the Kallio neighborhood of Helsinki and I like the area. It used to be a working-class area and still has a lot of young people and students so it's quite lively. Lots of drunks too of course. It's pretty densely populated, for Helsinki standards at least.

Kallion kulttuuriverkosto (Kallio Cultural Network) is a local organization that arranges events in and near the neighborhood. They had a logo contest, and while I usually don't take part in those, I thought I'd make an exception because it's sort of for the neighborhood and for a non-profit organization. Anyway, I apparently won the contest with the entry pictured here.

Above is a black & white version and below a color one.

The name of the organization is quite long, typical for Finnish language. And I didn't want to have a very long logotype so I had to hyphenate it. Kulttuuriverkosto is a compound word so there was a natural place to cut it. I started building the logo from small vector elements on a grid, a bit like building Legos™®©. First I made the regular letters but then decided there should be some interplay between the letters and lines, so I built some more organic forms in by connecting things to each other.

I put the small circles at the ends of some letters and then started thinking they look a bit like plant seeds. So I figured they can represent the plants growing from the cracks in alphalt, and symbolically maybe some events happening on the streets.

The whole shape of the logo is not confined to a square but instead seems to grow a bit into each direction. That is a symbol for the events taking place in not just Kallio, but around the "edges" as well. Of course, everyone seems to have a bit different definition for where the borders are.

I made this quite quickly so I didn't make optical corrections to the lines (horizontals should be slightly thinner than verticals so they would appear the same visually), but since the shape is sort of complex, that is not the first thing that bothers the eye.

I haven't seen the logo been used that much, and it's usually used quite small. Would be nice to see it used larger too, but maybe they're still practicing. Anyway, I'm quite happy with the result.

Posters from Sodankylä film festival

As I mentioned in the previous post, I went to Sodankylä Film Festival this year to make posters. My friend had asked me at least twice previously, but due to the day job and my bad planning-ahead-skills I had not managed to go before. This year I finally did manage to go there and it was definitely a very nice week.

The film festival has a tradition of hand-made posters, maybe even dating back to when the festival was first started 25 years ago. Every day there are some selected showings that need posters done. We usually were warned a few hours in advance, sometimes even the previous day, about which films posters were needed for, and what extra info there might be. Aside from the posters, we also made signage and other lettering.

Everything is done by hand and copy machines, I did bring my laptop along but we only used it for reference. It was very refreshing to work just by hand, since the computer easily becomes the default tool for everything. I did cheat a bit by drawing smaller and enlarging with the copy machine, but I suppose it's analog enough.

This was the first year there was a dedicated poster/graphics team. Besides making the posters, we also went to glue them around the town (which is quite small). The work was nicely paced, there was time to go to see the films also. Apparently the visiting directors also appreciate the custom posters and I heard some of them had asked copies for themselves. That is of course the best feedback a poster artist could get.

The festival itself was great, worth the 15-hour drive (I did have some friends with driving licenses along). As I said, the town is very small, so there's not that much to do besides see movies. It does get quite packed with everyone from the south coming over for the week. There's also a strange feeling of timelessness with the sun being above the horizon all the time, sometimes it's hard to guess the time of day. Most likely we'll return next year for more niceness.

The first image (above) is a detail of a silent film concert poster (3 Chaplin's short films). I heard the conductor had asked for a copy of the poster. Below is the whole poster.

Second poster is for Sergio Leone's classic spaghetti western For A Few Dollars More. Mr. Leone obviously wasn't a guest in the festival.

The third poster if for an Italian film by Pietro Marcello, which sounded interesting but that I didn't manage to see unfortunately. The director had also asked for a copy which was nice.

I might have some more lettering photos from the festival somewhere, maybe for the next post.

My girlfriend made some very nice posters too.

Film festival official pages.

Café chalkboard

As I've apologized for the delay between updates before, I won't do it this time. Fortunately I have made some lettering-related things while not updating.

Above is a chalkboard menu for a very nice café in Helsinki, Gran Delicato. This is my first actual chalkboard lettering work. I've been frequenting the café for long time now because of their excellent coffees, bread etc. They know my usual order by heart so I sometimes don't even have to say anything when ordering. The café is not even very close to my place but it's worth the trip anyway.

I tested the chalk drawing on a smaller board the café had, and it didn't work too well, but fortunately the larger board had a better surface for drawing. The small text isn't too stylized since it was a bit clumsy drawing it with the chalk, but the larger headlines match my paper sketches quite well.

The detail photos are cropped from the same image.

I made the board in June after going to Sodankylä Film Festival to draw posters (more on that later), and last week I made some small changes to show some new things that are going to be on the menu. The photos are from the first version.

Gran Delicato on eat.fi

Tattoo dictionary

Hello dear readers, as you may have noticed this blog has been on hiatus for a while now.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I was taking part in an exhibition Planet Fun Fun in Kerava art museum with my Official Ball-point Pen Tattoo Dictionary Project. In finnish it's "kuulakärkikynätatuointisanakirjaprojekti" which is a nice word. The exhibition went very well, some nice reviews in major papers included. I collected all the words I drew in Flickr sets, many with some notes and at least some info should be coming to all the images later. Take a look!

Official Tattoo Dictionary in Flickr.

&

Tattoos made in the Planet Fun Fun -exhibition

In other news, I'm back to freelancing after a bit over five years in Sulake. Thery were having some layoffs for typical "financial reasons" and I managed to be one of those. I did actually talk with my boss about volunteering to go, so this is not a bad thing. Five years anywhere is quite long these days, and I have stuff of my own to work on. On the other hand, I have to start arranging meetings myself now, just to keep the headlines coming for this blog. Anyway, I'm available for freelance projects now.

I did already get a new laptop and am now waiting for the CS4 Master Collection to arrive via UPS. So after I get that installed, look for more lettering entries in the blog.

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This week's posting is also an advertisement for an exhibition opening a week from now. A group of ten artists, including myself, have a 6-week engagement in Kerava art museum. I did mention it in an earlier post. Image of the invitation here, crop marks and all. I'll be doing my ball-point pen tattoo dictionary project and also another thing that also has to do with typography. Welcome to see it! The image has the name of the exhibition written . The shading was a bit unfinished like my part of the exhibition actually is too... Though hopefully everything will get finished in time. Made with felt-tip, ball-point and gel pens. Original size about 9,5 x 5,5 cm.

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OK, back from vacations, could have lasted a bit longer though... But I've still got some holidays waiting fortunately. This week's post was made probably in July - August. The company I work for has a new product out and I was making banners to advertise it. I was also along in designing the logo (because of this blog, actually) but that was earlier this year. The headline is from a brainstorm as it says (in case you are feeling too lazy to rotate your head. The script and blackletterish letterforms work quite nicely together and there's a slightly kinetic look to the whole thing. Script words could maybe benefit from smoother edges, but since these are all quickly made I didn't bother to polish that too much. Made with felt-tip pens with a touch of gel silver. Original size about 12,5 x 9,5 cm.

Handmade Lettering 37

Today's update has something in common with the previous post, namely the black letters with silver detailing. The style is different enough so I thought it's not a crime to post this. I was testing some letters with ornaments inside, similar to what I sometimes draw outside the words. It looked quite OK, so I figured I'd try to make the word itself in similar roundish forms so there would be sort of a double ornament. Word is cut to three rows to form a square shape. Notice how the horizontal line of the t goes through the line of the p descender instead of the loop. This is probably showing my buried aggression. Made with black felt-tip and silver gel pens, original size bit below 7 x 7 cm.

I'll be heading for a drive up north (Lapland etc.) for one and a half weeks so I will be skipping at least one update, perhaps two. So, later then!

Handmade Lettering 36

I just managed to finish (hopefully) some banners at work so this posting is honoring that little advancement in my week. The above headline doesn't actually have anything to do the banners I finished but hey, banners are banners, you know. There's some similarity in letterforms to an early blog post, though this one has more depth in the lines. The paper was too narrow to contain all the letters in the same style so I switched to smaller letters. And in the end circle to even smaller letters. But this works quite ok still. Made with felt-tip, ball-point and silver gel pens. Original size about 10 x 7 cm.

Handmade Lettering 35

This week's entry is from my sketchbook instead of office notes. It's a headline image from a note page dealing with my upcoming exhibition (or my part in a group exibition to be more accurate). The name of the exhibition will be Planet FunFun but since I wanted to keep it a secret at the time I wrote this unbreakable codename instead. The exhibition will have typographic & lettering stuff also, so I will probably post more about it later.

There's a strange glitch in the upper middle part of the picture, maybe some scanner thing or somesuch. Anyway, I'll keep it to myself. This was made with ball-point pens (red text) and paint + gel pens (center text). Original size about 13,5 x 10 cm.

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This is a not an actual meeting headline but some typographic testing made during some meeting. I suppose there's not much difference though, except I don't have to worry about any work secrets. The stripe thinking could probably have been taken further, it might be good to keep in mind to do that. The blue tones of this one are similar to the previous post but I'll try to pick some different ones for the next week. Made with the usual tools, original size is about 7 x 5 cm.