enormouschampion : making stuff in brooklyn

For our second “Friday I’m In Love” post, we want to focus on something from our process side. Drawing by hand. We love the moment when one of our ideas starts the long journey to becoming visualized…. the instant when we put pen to paper and let loose.

Before i knew what graphic design was (sometimes i still have my doubts) i would obsessively draw and re-draw record covers and skateboard graphics, filling up every area on countless paperbag textbook covers. This was the beginning of my love affair with drawing letterforms and the quality that can only be achieved from hand drawn lines. Thank you to The Cure (for all the record sleeves and inspiring the namesake of this post series) and to Powell Peralta….

Fast forward to art school where some of my assignments would include redrawing typefaces with a rapidograph and getting intimate with counters, serifs and all things typographic. The work of Herb Lubalin, Paul Rand and Saul Bass were my graphic heroes.

A few years ago a book of hand drawn typography came out called Hand Job: A Catalog of Type by Michael Perry. Definitely a staple for all book shelves.

(Coincidently we are recent studio neighbors with him and his photographer gal Anna Wolf who Jordan unknowingly worked on a record sleeve with)

Today we see more mainstream usages everywhere from Popeye’s Chicken graphics to soda can packaging. Even though this “Juno” style is starting to feel over saturated in our visual landscape, i still find it refreshing to see that things come from someone’s steady or not-so-steady handiwork.

-jwo