Cute animals with ereaders

February 24, 2015April 5, 2015 | Erika Schnatz

The digital department manager at Ooligan Press is the reason I’ve drawn many cute animals over the past year. She’s the reason my silly animal drawings are all over the Ooligan Press website, so when she requested some kitchy animals for her instructional ebook guide, I was happy to oblige. Without further ado, may I present cute animals with ereaders!

Sword + Dagger Logo Design

February 10, 2015April 5, 2015 | Erika Schnatz

I was recently contacted by two lovely graduates of my publishing program — they had combined forces to start a publishing services company called Sword and Dagger. They had a super cool name and some fabulous design inspiration to go along with it. It didn’t take me much time at all to create some logo ideas:

They liked number 9 best, and wanted to make sure the sword and dagger were represented in the design, and they wanted to see how the design would look on a black background. So I put together the following:

The final designs are below. It was a fun project that was a nice break from what I normally do, and I can’t wait to see how the designs look in print!

You can check out their website here: http://swordanddagger.wix.com/publishingservices

Jazzy T-Shirt

January 29, 2015April 5, 2015 | Erika Schnatz

Let’s get this sketch blog back up and running!

Here’s a t-shirt design I drew for a jazz-related project at Ooligan Press:

It was deemed a little too folksy for a jazz t-shirt, and the style wasn’t quite right for the target demographic, but it’s a nice little composition. Someone brought up Michael Cera when talking about the design, which is a compliment of the highest order for me. I loved Juno. :)

The black and white drawing is below:

Dam Good Books

July 1, 2014April 5, 2015 | Erika Schnatz

Here’s another little thing I whipped up for Ooligan Press:

I offered a beaver-less option if the press wanted to be a bit more high-brow, but I’m happy to see the little guy made the cut.

Ooligan Press is putting together “Dam Book Bundles” – basically a collection of 3 titles that our press has published. The titles are offered at a discount because you’re buying multiple books. It’s a pretty sweet deal, and you can check it out here if you want to buy some excellent titles from a student-run independent press. Check it out for the puns alone!

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.