BRIEF // Create a vintage style comic book heroine illustration modeled after the President’s likeness for the company rebrand which also includes social graphics and web banners.
The art direction includes nostalgic visuals by digitally creating flawed or damaged old media illustrations. To create the visuals, I researched multiple offset printed books.
Thinking with the end in mind, I completely disregarded perfection to give it the most organic look by intentionally being loose with color fillings and not worrying about staying in the lines too much. The strokes are calligraphic & use thick-to-thin-to-thick lines to create that authentic line quality. Therefore, the creative process consisted of creating the artwork outlines in a heavy black ink vector brush by hand reminding myself to leave strokes as is as I illustrated to keep the imperfect look, and developing the key image to gain approval before coloring. Anything too refined would not have been the authentically vintage art direction I was aiming for.
For coloring, I focused on layering Black, Cyan, Yellow, and Magenta shapes to create the final colors using halftone patterns and using the multiplying layer to blend all four to resemble an authentic printing press look aided by halftone patterns. While filling in colors by hand, I purposely rushed filling in solid colors so I could leave mistakes such as having paper texture showing through in small areas.
I learned from my research and expected by studying vintage comics that at times plates misalign and there is too much or little ink on the plate. For textures, vintage newspaper textures were used throughout for web and social graphics to drive the vintage comic feel even further.
Flat Versions
Created for instances when the halftone patterns might not be ideal.
Behind the Scenes
This project started with rough sketches to finalizing with digitally creating the artwork in Adobe Illustrator
ABOUT
Word – The Agency, a boutique communications firm, was founded by Courtney Beck in 2019. A seasoned marketing and communications professional, Courtney knows the power that words have to shape your brand, for better or for worse. Courtney has worked both in-house and as a freelancer, most recently serving as the head of global marketing for leadership development firm AchieveForum. Prior to that she worked in commercial positioning for Novozymes, digital communications for IBM, and corporate communications for Bayer CropScience. Courtney started her career on the agency side, working for Gibbs & Soell (now G&S Business Communications) and Howard, Merrell and Partners.
