For this one I wanted to do a neon sign, Carlsbad has this famous statue of a surfer, called the kook, locals make fun of the statue because of the pose and he gets dressed (some call it vandalized) to support teams, or make some kind of political statement, etc. I wanted to include the kook in the neon sign.
The above shows my sketch, the color sketch and the line work in illustrator, after that, back to photoshop for some glowing effects. and voila!
The main Idea is to make all the San Diego County cities into 80’s logos or graphics, as often as possible. For today’s graphic, I did Chula Vista, California. Beautiful city, not that famous as a tourist attraction, and yet, it has hiking trail, horse trails, beach, beautiful suburbs, etc.
Downtown Chula Vista has a circular sign which you will see if you search for the city. I based today’s graphic in that sign.
I think it looks more like a beer logo than an 80’s graphic, what do you think?
5 years later… In a world where Corona has become a feared word, you need a face mask to go outside, and the closest you can come to a human being is 6ft. What started as 15 days is now what feels like a million years going on 5 months. We have survived murder hornets, raging fires, heat waves, sudden inland winds of up to 145 MPH, riots, and double hurricanes.
In this post-apocalyptic world, your writer re-starts the blog. With a sudden obsession for 80’s graphics and oh, so much time on her hands. As an effort to keep my skills sharp and bring some distraction to the unsuspecting reader, I’m making a series of graphics based in the eighties esthetics, with all its glorious gradients, and textures, and loud colors, and type treatments that bring you right back to the, now, end of the previous century.
First up is the most famous landscape of the City of San Diego, CA. I started it up as a simple sketch in photoshop, based on several photos.
You can see the inspiration of both the 80’s graphics and the pictures the sketch is based on
After this, some color blocking, that makes it easier to interpret once I move to vector format in Illustration.
You can start to see the idea, I also decided to add a little sailboat, to emphasize the water. I went crazy with the gradients here. Afterwards, I took the sketch to illustrator and traced all the buildings, the sun, the sailboat, played with the typeface and colors until I ended up with this:
This looked like it would look great on a t-shirt,
I’d love to hear your thoughts, whether they are on the world we are living in, or the graphic you see.
PS if you click on the image, it takes you to my Redbubble shop, where you can get the t-shirts or other products with this graphic printed on it.
murradesigns 