My new “H20 Just Add Water” SIGG water bottle.

This was one of those designs that took the long way around to get to where it ended up. I think my brain was stuck on square aspect ratios and circular designs for too long. Once I finally got the color palette settled some of the more important parts of the composition came together.

I decided I wanted to emphasize the “verticality” of the water bottle and keep a bit more focus on earthy, natural colors. Although the blues might be a bit “ideal” I think it worked out while keeping the water-element evident throughout.

I also liked designing for this product due to the printing process… I can have a white canvas which permits me to use soft shadows instead of hard edged ones.

Available to CJ/CP affiliates via “tornadorepublic” unique tags.
Available for licensing inquiries.

Great pizza by the slice or whole! If you’re not on the West side don’t worry – they deliver!

I’ll be honest, I had a pizza craving yesterday and that means it didn’t take long for me to crave doing a pizza design in my vintage sign style with a modern twist. The colors for this were sampled from a photo of a slice of pepperoni pizza – how’s that for die hard?

It’s another one of my fictitious “Any Town, USA” pieces (or, in this case, “Any City, USA”). The skyline is actually a combination of Minneapolis with some hints of Toronto and Boston which, I’m sure, have perfectly good pizza joints and not all are on the West side so please don’t send me any angry emails.

It’s available on shirts, mugs, hoodies, and more at TornadoRepublic.com

Available for affiliate sales using Commission Junction – Cafepress. As always it’s tagged with the word “tornadorepublic”.

It’s no secret that I love vintage-type signage – particularly the type found on beer bottle labels, brewery or pub signs. I love the colors, style, interesting typography, you name it. So, whenever I have a chance I try to do a little something along these lines.

“Aquila Ale” is, like many of my signage designs, fictional. It was suggested to me that I do a beer named after an eagle or some majestic bird. In researching this theme, knowing that I never want to tread on someone else’s intellectual property, I realized there were several beer or brewery-type logos out there that had designs with heavy emphasis on the eagle. So, rather than wrack my brain to do something original-but-similar I decided to make a tertiary connection to the design, which I often do. So, to explain, “Aquila” is, among many things, the name of a genus of birds which includes some eagles. It’s also the Latin name of “The Eagle” celestial constellation of stars, and, to wrap it up even tidier, it ties that in with Zeus’ immortal bird which earned that place among the stars. So, there’s my justification for using a tangent off of the original idea of an eagle.

The colors were dictated by the eagle design itself and then emphasized more to suggest the golden colors of beer.

This design and many others are available through www.TornadoRepublic.com

A free-form video about designing not only for the product itself, in a print-on-demand environment, but also for the online customer first-impression.

I’ll admit, it’s not a polished video by any stretch – I didn’t want to delay recording my thoughts in favor of editing. I hope you find my ideas useful nonetheless.

Some of you know that one of my favorite design styles is that found in beer and wine labels, brewery, and tavern signage. I don’t get to indulge in it as much as I’d like. However, I decided I’d be self-indulgent a little and combine a bit of my daily life (that of artist and designer) with this style. So, here’s a little treat to myself and perhaps others, who enjoy these things, may have fun with.

I’m not sure if it’s just funny or poking fun but seriously… what will an Emo kid do if he doesn’t like it? Write me a sad poem?

Black printing on a black shirt using black machinery, in a darkened room where emotional high school students read poetry and toil away cranking out tshirts.

Occasionally the goth kids bust in to start trouble – wearing their own black shirts printed with black ink using black machiner… hmmm, maybe Darwin was right?

www.TornadoRepublic.com

Vintage Garage style gear from www.TornadoRepublic.com