Last March I was contacted by Ink Butter to develop a logo for a skin care product they planned to launch this year.
The original logo concept Ink Butter sent to me was a good starting point but rather difficult to read. As modified set
type it had no unique identity.


Knowing the logo was to be printed on a small 2 oz. bottle I began sketching concepts with minimal flourishes and a lockup of the cap I & B. The sketches were produced with pencil and Pitt marker brush. As with most lettering projects all the concept sketching is a trial and error process best defined as making many visual mistakes to find answers and solutions.


After the first series of sketches I had to concentrate on letter specific flourishes and additional development of cap IB lockup.


A series of 5 concept sketches were selected for presentation. The 2 versions on the right of this image were selected and elements of each were combined to create the drawing template for Illustrator.


The Ink Butter logo is currently in use on both the product bottle and website. It looks beautiful and is one of my all time lettering career favorites.

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Yes Sir is my attempt at a formal script sample. Something a bit more commercial than a freeform gestural script.









I started with a loose pencil sketch to set up the basic vector lines. As the compostion progressed I strayed from the sktech to make all the letters readable. Eventually I toned down the flourishes and added a inline give the letters some depth. The initial vector draft was a bit too complex.

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Slow Down You Crazy Child is a recent tattoo lettering project. I was so pleased to have received a photo from Vicki showing her inked wrist.



This project began with a series of quick little compositions to show what was possible.



As with all projects I began with a template sketch starting point. Adjustments were made for the lettering to read properly at a small size. Words and letters had to be reshaped, resized and altered to create the composition.



After the composition came together I embellished to the letters to provide Vicki with something unique to enjoy for a long time. I am amazed her tattoo artist was able to recreate all the details of my lettering at such a small size. What a pleasant surprise!

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Headstrong is a project I worked on for an art director in Belgium. A good example to show the amount of preliminary sketching involved when creating a lettering piece from scratch.



Having done some 40+ sketches I let the client choose which version to proceed with. The version selected required additional development.



After setting up the initial character lines I decided to proceed with additional sketches. Initially there were too many irregular overlapping lines with no consistent baseline or X-height. I did some quick studies with a Condor pen and choose the version on the bottom to scan and use as a revised template in Illustrator.



With the new template image everything fell into place with weights, B/W contrast and visual clarity. Big difference from the initial attempt.



This was one of those rare projects in my lettering career in which a client loved the progress sketches including the final lettering, had full knowledge of pricing and payment responsibility but decided to not pay for any of the work I produced for unknown reasons. Regardless, this one is a very cool lettering piece to show which I believe will lead to something positive with more opportunities for interesting lettering projects in the future.

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This evening I was archiving a bunch of job files from the past year and I noticed some lettering for a Marie Meier project a while ago. This was some of the coolest lettering iI worked on at the beginning of the year. Its always interesting to letter with some tattoo influence for inspiration.



These are the quick sketches. This was one of those projects when I drew the lettering and embellishments freehand in Illustrator. Just winged it. I had a general idea of what I wanted the lettering to look like and used the sketches for a rough template guide.



I drew the lettering for one version on a set of arced guidelines as I needed to produce it for use on apparel.



When drawing the embellishments I started out with smooth curved paths. The paths were offset and I moved the bezier points to change the thickness of the stroke.

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This is a recent tattoo lettering project. Though it may look like a easy freehand script to create I spent quite a bit of time learning the rhythm and flow of the words. I wanted to find an interesting way to tell a story with a line of script. Something with a bit of an edge for a person involved with crafts and tools.

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Gotta Be Bad to be Good is a freeform script style I have been developing for the past few years. This style is a loose mix of upper and lowercase letterforms. When the piece was only 3 words it needed more interest and was changed into a play on words. After getting the rhythm and flow worked out for Gotta be Bad to be Good I decided to change the visual read to something a bit more complex with flourishes and swirls. The final result is quite different than the initial sketch and definitely more interesting to view.

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Here are some preliminary sketches for the Little Dude lettering design. This project is another example of how I change letterforms and structure while drawing in Adobe Illustrator. The tight sketch was a good start but was out of balance and the cross stroke of the double t did not read properly. All in all I am pleased with the final result and plan to continue developing this lettering style.

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This is a project from last year that I'm going to enter in the Best Of 2009 at LetterCult. SB is a dog I've been taking care of for a few years and I wanted to create a lettering piece that honors his amazing personality.

The sketch was a quick wrist exercise with little detail. The scroll lines and flourishes were drawn freehand in Illustrator and adjusted as each letter was drawn. After drawing Amazing and SB I decided to make the design symmetrical and place The on top. This piece will probably be reproduced as a T-shirt sometime in 2010.

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I recently accepted a tattoo lettering project from a person in England. He requested the words My My Hey Hey. This was a complex lettering treatment to create with a interlocking letters and a swash on the bottom.

My studio wall was filled with sketches and overlapping tissue studies to find a visual solution for balance and flow of connecting letterforms. I eventually found the solution with the two lowercase y's and scanned the tissues needed for use as templates in Adobe Illustrator.

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