Here Be Dragons!

June 24, 2014April 5, 2015 | Erika Schnatz

For my Book Design class this term, I had to design an entire book (it was awesome!) so here are the cover comps I came up with:

This first one had some nice elements, but it looked a bit old for the target audience of this book (middle-grade level readers).

I really liked this design as well, but it looks like an adult book.

This one was the clear favorite of my peers. It was by far the most age appropriate, and since it’s a book for younger audiences, I could get away with having an image-based back cover. The author photo and bio is much more of an adult book element anyway.

Here’s the final! I made some suggested improvements, like handlettering the text on the cover and adding the dragon’s arms to hold the banner. I obviously redrew the front and back illustrations as well, and added some cracks around the dragon butt to add to the illusion of the dragon breaking through the back of the book cover. My classmates liked where the colors bled outside the lines in the comp, so I replicated that in the final. I moved the ISBN box to a more sensible place as well.

I had some trouble finding reference images for the dragon’s butt, but as multiple people reminded me, dragons aren’t real so I could draw it however I liked.

MAPS Re-branding

June 12, 2014April 5, 2015 | Erika Schnatz

Ooligan is not the only rebranding I’ve worked on this term. I wound up reworking one of my own designs for the MAPS team, a group of peer mentors that I am responsible for organizing. Conveniently, this means I can change the look of our brand whenever I want, because I have the power (please read that in a He-Man voice because I think he says that).

Anyway, long story short, I had to update the logo to make it digital-friendly. It lost a bit of it’s character, but it’s sleek-looking! Also, I learned what kerning was.

Original:

Revamped:

A fancy button I made that connects to a fancy webform:

All of the revised work fits with Portland State University’s visual branding guidelines, which is probably important if this mentor group is going to have any longevity. Hooray for learning graphic design things!

Ooligan Press Blog Branding

June 10, 2014April 5, 2015 | Erika Schnatz

I’ve completed my first year of grad school. Crazy! The next few months are going to be relatively light, responsibility-wise, so expect to see new material pop up in your news feeds on a regular basis. Unless I get really lazy this summer…

Anyway, what follows are some blog badges I created for the student-run publisher I work for, Ooligan Press. We’re working on rebranding the Press and changing up the website, and my silly little doodles are part of it all.

First time around I created everything in Adobe Illustrator, which made everything graphic and clean, but these were missing the hand-drawn/human element that is an integral part of the press’ identity.

These initial badges aren’t bad, but our digital and social media department lead was looking for something that is obviously made by the human hand. So I went back to the drawing board (literally), and came up with these:

You may notice I was roped into creating a few more badges. This is not the last you’ll see of the Ooligan-related work I did this term.

All of the Cats

May 22, 2014April 10, 2015 | Erika Schnatz

Here’s something I did a few months ago for the Independent Publishing Resource Center (IPRC) in Portland. They needed a half-sheet sized catalog cover to promote classes and events offered in February and March of this year. To the surprise of no one who has skimmed through this blog, it features cats.

The Valentine’s Day image was the front cover and the St. Patrick’s Day cats occupied the back cover.

Type Specimen: Adobe Caslon Pro

May 20, 2014April 10, 2015 | Erika Schnatz

One of our assignments for my book design class this term was to create three type specimen sheets. Here’s the final one I made (and my favorite), for Adobe Caslon Pro:

It was tough to find a limerick that wasn’t too ribald for class, though I quite enjoy the one I found.

Type Specimen: Rockwell

May 8, 2014April 10, 2015 | Erika Schnatz

One of our assignments for my book design class this term was to create three type specimen sheets. Here’s the second one I made, for Rockwell:

Type Specimen: Century Schoolbook

May 6, 2014April 10, 2015 | Erika Schnatz

One of our assignments for my book design class this term was to create three type specimen sheets. Here’s the first one I made, for Century Schoolbook:

Readin’ with Sasquatch

July 30, 2013April 10, 2015 | Erika Schnatz

Here’s the final art for my Powell’s tote bag submission. I really liked it, but it didn’t crack the top 10. Since a very similar idea did make the top 10 (and was way less cute, in my humble opinion) I have a feeling my design was passed over because I didn’t make the Powell’s logo big enough. Whatever! At least I got a nice little portfolio piece out of the contest.

More Sasquatch!

July 25, 2013April 10, 2015 | Erika Schnatz

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Sasquatch because he’s the main component of an image I created for a tote bag design contest at Powell’s books. Here’s my linework for the submission – next week I’ll upload the color version (which is looking pretty adorable so far!)