Writing Dracula: An Anniversary Edition

Back in 2009 I designed graphics for a pen and business card set for a company named Acme Studios based in Hawaii. I called the design “QWERTY” because I based it on old typewriter keys and the QWERTY keyboard (still in use today on everyone’s computers and phones).

Last year Acme contacted me to see if I’d be interested in designing a logo for “Dracula”. This wasn’t to be Dracula the Movie, or even Dracula the TV show—it was to be for Dracula the Pen. Acme had been contacted by the estate of Bram Stoker to create a limited edition pen set to commemorate in 2012 the 100th anniversary of the death of the author/creator of Dracula, and unacknowledged father of the present day Vampire Empire. It was one of the few times Acme had gone to an outside designer with an assignment—most of the pens created for Acme (like QWERTY) are designer generated ideas. This Dracula logo would be used on the pen itself, and all the packaging—which was to be quite elaborate.

With some projects I start out by creating many small rough pencil sketches to try to discover how I want to solve a problem. Somehow with this project I knew from the start what I wanted to do. In my head I had eliminated all the hackneyed and clichéd solutions that one would come to expect for such a logo. I decided that I wanted to start out with a sort of black-letter, gothic form as a base, and then transform it into something that would communicate what I thought of as a sort of “decayed elegance”. So I just started drawing:

For some reason I stopped before completing the word (guess I knew what another “a” would look like). But I liked a lot of what I was seeing and expanded it into my next rough. This one was a lot more fluid, and I really liked where it was going:

What had started out with gothic, black-letter forms, was turning into something else—but I wasn't sure how to define it:

Then, using that pencil rough as a base, I started inking over it on an overlay to start to work out and refine the weights and forms:

After scanning the inked version, I placed it in Adobe Illustrator as a template, and started creating the final art. As you can see, I ended up deviating from my inking in several places:

Finally, I was pleased with what I had done . . . I felt it had that feeling of “decayed elegance” that I had been striving for. I rendered it in blood-red against a black background then presented the final art to Acme, who in turn presented it to the Stoker estate. It was approved without a hitch:

Acme will be releasing this pen set this year in time for Halloween. It will be in a limited edition of 999 fountain pens with blood-red ink and an interchangeable rollerball option. The pen will lay within a coffin shaped box together with a bottle of blood-red ink, and a red rollerball refill:

And the entire set is encased in what appears to be a bound edition of Dracula:

The set will retail for $500 and will be availabe through ACME Studio retailers.

COMMENTS WELCOME!

I Should Have Seen This One Coming!

Apparently Nestlé's Nesquik has taken a cue from my Wreck-It Ralph logo design and is now running a branded cross-promotion with Disney's upcoming animated feature Wreck-It Ralph. As we did with Ralph, they've turned Quiky the bunny and the Nesquik logo into fun 8-bit versions. So remember kids: "It's so rich and thick and choco-lik, That you can't...drink it slow...if it's Quik!"

A big "Thank You" to Art Thompson of NoRelevance for alerting me and sending the photo.

COMMENTS WELCOME!

Wreck-It Ralph Title Treatment Seen at E3 Conference

Some friends of mine were good enough to send along a few photos of the Wreck-It Ralph title treatment lording it over the attendees recently at Los Angeles" E3EXPO. These were sent by Steve Silvas and taken by Mike Moreno. Thanks guys! I'm extremely pleased to see that Disney Motion Pictures is making this title treatment one of the key components of its promotion for this upcoming animated film.

Wreck-It Ralph Trailer Debuts on Web

The Wreck-It Ralph official trailer is finally up on the web. Look for the animated version of the title treatment I designed (just below) at the end of the trailer. For more on my design process for this logo see my previous Wreck-It Ralph posting.

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Title Treatment for “Wreck-It Ralph”. —— Client: Walt Disney Animation Studios

It’s been a while since I’d been called to do a title treatment for a major motion picture, so it was with great pleasure that I went in to see Disney Executive VP John Sabel to discuss working with them on developing a logo for a new animated feature slated for release this November 2nd. Wreck-It Ralph tells the story of Ralph, an arcade video game "bad guy" (John C. Reilly)—a one-man wrecking crew who is determined to prove he can be a good guy. Starting out as a classic arcade 8-bit character, Ralph travels through several arcade worlds, ending up in fully articulated 24-bit form. Here’s the final logo we ended up with: The process of developing this title treatment extended over several months. It’d be impossible to detail here all the stages we went through, but I’d like to just show here first some of my development pencil sketches: Some of the letterforms I used were reminiscent of the shapes in the character. I tried to provide as many attitudes and alternatives as I felt worked for the subject matter. It was felt that a suggestion of the main character and his 8-bit nature might be a good way to go. In all cases I wanted the treatment to be playful and reminiscent of some of the classic arcade logos of the ‘70s. When I came up with the idea of an 8-bit logo surrounding an 8-bit face, I knew we had hit paydirt. So from that point on I took that approach and developed  the logo in digital form. It went through many, many different stages, culminating in the title treatment you see at the top of this post. It was decided that the face I came up with for Ralph was a little too “angry” looking . . . so I took it down a notch. Also the “Disney” logo needed to somehow be incorporated. We tried it both inside and and outside and above the treatment. I tried creating a border, making a self contained “badge” treatment with the Disney logo inside: We then simplified the “badge” a bit: We eliminated the “badge” completely, again opting for more simplicity: We changed Ralph’s face again, making him a little bit meaner looking, and edited the shapes of the letterforms. In the end we eliminated the “brick” texture that filled the letterforms, opting again for a simpler look. Here’s that final title treatment again:  

Lettering & Typographic Artists: Sucker Punched by Film Industry?

No doubt by now you've seen the title treatment for "Sucker Punch". It seems to be everywhere. I don't know who designed and did the art for it—and perhaps it's best that I don't—because I have a lot of issues with this design including its plethora of inconsistencies. BUT . . . on the bright side, I will say that its free-wheeling disregard for convention is a welcome reprieve from the unimaginative, dull but "safe" typographic treatments that have taken over film promotions for the last few decades. The genres of action and sci-fi movies would seem likely candidates where designers could "stretch their wings" so to speak, and be much more creative with their typography and lettering. If "Sucker Punch" is seen as a successful promotion, perhaps it will be the beginning of a trend, marking the moment when it was OK for creative typography and lettering to return to movie advertising. There was a time when I was regularly called upon to work on title treatments for feature films. In retrospect there seemed to be more creative freedom back then—less control exerted on creativity by clients. A lot of what I did never saw the light of day, and much of it I'd prefer not to show. But there were some that I'm still proud of. The one that most people remember is my treatment for Zardoz, a film directed by John Boorman—who had previously directed the amazing Deliverance.

The design of this treatment was derived from one of the plot elements in the film—crystal rings. Originally my design had the two Zs mirroring each other, but it was decided that would interfere with legibility. John Boorman liked my solution so much that he used it in the opening credits for the film: It has been suggested by others that this design was the original inspiration of many rock and roll band logos done by others—such as "Asia" and "Anthrax": I have no knowledge that this actually was the case, but looking at them now I have to admit that it seems likely.

Another treatment I'm happy to have worked on was for Wolfen. This little seen film was directed by Michael Wadleigh and starred Albert Finney, Diane Venora, Gregory Hines and Edward James Olmos. In this particular design I was trying to do my sort of tongue-in-cheek take on all those great horror movie titles from the '40s and '50s . . . the ones with the lettering suggestive of dripping blood and ripping flesh—such as:

And finally, the one that I would really have loved to have seen the light of day: The title treatment I designed for Ridley Scott's Alien never made it into the public arena. It had some small promotional uses before it was run over by the Bill Gold Advertising machine and relegated to the back burner. At any rate, this was great fun to have worked on—the more so since I was able to work on it with my friend (the now famous "pop-surrealist") Todd Schorr. I designed and drew the forms based on the "bio-mechanical" forms I saw in some publicity stills from the production, and Todd painted the absolutely gorgeous finished art. Perhaps we went too far with this piece? I'll probably never know what really happened.

But what I do know is that in the years between then and now we haven't seen any great strides forward in the art of title treatments. Am I being over-optimistic in thinking that perhaps now we're at the beginning of a new Golden Age? I hope not.

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"Cry-Baby" on Broadway

I was asked by Moira Deakin, Creative Projects Manager at Serino Coyne Advertising, to design a title treatment for the Broadway musical adaptation of the John Waters film “Cry-Baby”. I did seven design solutions including the four you see below. The producers of the show selected the one at the bottom. For reasons unclear to me this design was eventually adapted and changed slightly, but still remained fairly faithful to my original intent. Unfortnately the show closed recently after only 45 previews and 68 performances.

I was quite proud of all the work I had done on this title treatment. I've put together a Case Study PDF of the steps I followed from start to finish on this project, which can be downloaded from my page of downloads.