One of the reasons why we make Studio Snack, a food podcast about design, is the opportunity to do a creative experiment each month.
For this month’s Pride special, I’ve indulged my love of drag and a good bagel in watercolour illustration, iPad illustration and typography. But there’s more than meets the eye in these bits of creative playtime…
Rainbow bagels turned out to be so vibrantly colourful that I needed highlighters to illustrate them in their full glory. And you have to be quick to get them – they'd nearly run out at the bakery I visited. (Yes, I could have worked from photographic reference but where’s the fun – or the snack – in that?)
For the sparkly platform shoe to hold a menu on an insole, I wondered if AI could help? It could but it was all a bit… flat. With iPad illustration, I could exaggerate, hand letter and add implausible levels of sparkle.
And the menu as variety bill? Well, finding food with a colour of the rainbow in its name that could also be a drag name is harder than it looks. Then there’s the job of finding a typeface that expresses each in the right visual language for a variety poster.
These have reminded me that there’s always an easy way to do something – but going into more depth, putting in the extra work and applying some knowledge are worth it when you want to communicate that bit more.
Listen here, or wherever you find your podcasts.
