Event posters

Creating designs for t-shirts is one thing, but event posters are a trickier business I find. Here, I'm not expected to create a work of art, but instead communicating information is the most important aspect. But without designing something attractive to the eye, that information is wasted. So it's a tricky balance. I'm no graphic designer, but recently, I was asked to design event posters for the Premier BJJ Championships - a series of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tournaments in the UK staged at various cities throughout the year.

Cork
The first tournament is for Ireland - Saturday June 23rd in Cork, if you fancy visiting. Here's my poster design:

Here is a breakdown of my thought processes on the design...

Sticker Design, Diginate review

I love stickers - especially BJJ ones, so I decided to make my own. I drew up three new designs specifically to test how good the sticker printing service would be and for something I could use for self promotional marketing. For this initial sample, I used the online service from. www.diginate.com Here's how they turned out:

Morcegão Rashguard

Masaru Fight Co. are a UK based fightwear company that make fightwear and leisure wear for the grappling community. They recently began a custom rashguard design service and asked if I could test it out. I drew an evil looking vampire bat and tried various Illustrator elements, eg gradients and masking, to see if the printed version would stay faithful to my digital original.

Here's how I designed the bat artwork:

Monkey Style T-shirt

I've mentioned before that I regularly contribute to a BJJ magazine called Jiu Jitsu Style. In addition to this, I have designed a rashguard for them, and a t-shirt. This new creation is based firmly on my love of the old Chinese fable Journey to the West and the character Monkey King, or Sun Wu Kong, to give him his proper name.

Read on to see how I took the core sketch and built it up over a period of many steps to create the final product...

Review: Fineliner Pens

Summary
I review a wide range of differently branded fineliner pens and examine their useability, smoothness of ink flow, nib quality, ink quality and overall handling.

Caveat: This review represents my own personal opinion. I am not sponsored by any company. The comments I make relate directly to me own personal style of inking, yours might be different so I advise purchasing a couple of brands of pens and trying them out yourself to find the best one for you.

Introduction
Fineliner pens are typically identified as tiny width, fibre-tipped, technical drawing or sketching pens. The ink is invariably pigment based, lightfast and permanent. They are best used on smooth paper with little grain. There are dozens of brands each varying considerably in price and each with their own handling quirks. I decided to buy a whole bunch of these and test them out over a number of drawing projects.

Dragon Fly

I often write and shoot photos for a UK based magazine called Jiu Jitsu Style. I was also asked by them to create art for a rashguard that will be made by Tatami Fightwear and bear the Jiu Jitsu Style branding. The result is my 'Dragon Fly' creation: half dragon, half dragonfly!

Here's how this crazy chimera came about...

Tap Cancer Out T-shirt Design

Tap Cancer Out is a charity non-profit that is run by members of the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Community. The charity raises funds through the sale of merchandise and events for various established cancer charities. I designed this t-shirt alongside fightwear brand Scramble and proceeds from the sale of this tee will go towards Tap Cancer Out.

Here's how I put it together...