I recently was hired to come up with an album cover text logo for Yonder Music artist Stephanie Fagan. Knowing that they will also want to make merch I decided to also create an "icon", something simple but strong.... The "Emily the Strange" character image came to mind, because it's so identifiable, so I wanted to create something that was simple and had that same kind of "power". Stephanie's album is called "Heart Thief" so an image of a "bandit" came to mind.
Above is a sequence of how the Bandit Girl icon was created. First I looked at photo's of Stephanie on her FB page. I then took out a pad of paper and quickly sketched with simplicity in mind, but that it's no doubt an image of Ms. Fagan. For the geeks, I love sketching with Color-Tex non-photo blue pencils. I just like how they feel. Once I got the image I liked, I then light-boxed it and hand inked it, using Windsor & Newton series 7 brushes. From there I then scanned it and re-traced it in Illustrator, making it a vector file, which now can be sized at any size and retain it's sharpness.
This was a super fun project for me, one in which the execution matched the expectations of my initial vision. That doesn't always happen. The bonus is that the client loved it!
