Areeja's Design Journey

21st March 2022 Today I made my designs for the letter O. I already had an idea of the theme I wanted to go for as I wanted to make the letter look like the planet earth and then make it look like it's in outer space by adding stars to it. I made a letter O by making a circle and using another circle and the minus front pathfinder to take a section out of the middle of the shape. I then added a freeform gradient with green and blue shades to make it resemble the planet earth. I then added a slight radial blur to make the colours blend more. For the stars, I made some small circles and added a pucker effect to them all to make them look like stars. I then added lighter coloured circles behind them and added a gaussian blur to them all to make them look like they're shining.  Final upload for the letter O 22nd March 2022 Today I made my designs for the letter P. This one was tough as I didn't have a solid concept in mind for what I was going to make. In fact, I ended up compl

19th March 2022 Today, I worked on my designs for the letter M. I did a few sketches for this one but the ideas for this design came to me quite quickly. I decided that after the success of my letter J, I wanted to try something else with the 3D tools in Illustrator. I drew my letter M out using the pen tool. I then used the extrude and rotate tools in the 3D settings to make the letter 3D. After I did that, I added a material to it and then made a shadow underneath the shape by making an ellipse shape and lowering the opacity on it to make it look like a shadow. Final upload for the letter M 20th March 2022 This time, I am doing my design for the letter N. I had a few sketches drawn out but my final concept was slightly different to any of my sketches as I initially went with a circular design where the letter was inside a circle. It wasn't until I chose the colours for the letter with the radial gradient that I decided to make it look like a fire. I decided to add warp effects to

17th March 2022 Today I did the designs for the letter K. I had some sketches completed already so I had to choose one and then start designing around it. I decided to go with one of my sketches initially and kept it as a shadow in the final upload. Instead of making the sketch version the main part of the design, I used the pucker and bloat tool on the shape and bloated the shape by 20%. I also thought that it would be a good idea to add a pattern to the design as well which is why I came up with the checked pattern that I had to make myself and save to my patterns so that I could use it in the design. To finish the design, I added a gradient to the stroke for a soft lighting effect that used the colours from the pattern.  Final upload for the letter K 18th March 2022 Today, I made the designs for the letter L. As I was approaching the halfway point of the alphabet section of the challenge, I was realising that I was struggling to come up with impressive designs like I was coming up w

15th March 2022 I have decided that I don't want to do daily blog entries anymore as I feel that they are too repetitive so now I am doing these blog entries for a couple of days at a time. The letter I was a tough one to design as I feel that there is only so much that you can do with this until you make it unrecognisable. I decided to keep the shape relatively simple as well as experimenting with light and shadows. With the letter itself, I decided to use line gradients to show the light and shade to give it a 2.5D effect. I decided to also add some shapes behind the letter with the opacity lowered to make it look like a shadow.   Final upload for letter I 16th March 2022 Today was time to make the letter J. I first did some sketches and chose a version of the sketches that I liked. The initial design was made by putting thin lines together so I had to thicken them slightly and then I wanted to try out the new 3D features on Illustrator so I used the inflate tool in the 3D menu t

14th March 2022 It has now been a full week since I have started doing this challenge and today was spent designing the letter H. I did some sketches beforehand and chose the one that I liked which is what I have been doing most days since I started the challenge. Like I did with the letter A, I decided to use a flat illustration approach to colouring the letter as well as removing the outlines on the shapes I used to make the design look smoother. I also decided to use gradients to make certain parts of the illustration look smooth as well as using them to give the illusion of the design being lit.  Final upload for the letter H 1 week update/general update on my Instagram page This is the first time in a while that I have uploaded content to my Instagram page daily although I am unsure if I will commit to this for the remainder of the challenge as it is very time consuming.  Instagram is a great place for publishing posters and other design work as it has allowed me to connect and br

13th March 2022 Today, I had to rush my design process as I had designed and uploaded the final post within 4 hours to make sure it was done before the deadline as I had time constraints due to having a busy day. This meant that the drawings that I had done were very rushed and because I had an idea of using a rope style brush stroke so I wanted to spend some time trying to work out how to go about finding and using that. I eventually found a rope brush stroke online and edited it to what I needed and used it. The initial drawing on Illustrator was done by using the pencil tool and my pen for my laptop to sketch the outlines out. I then smoothed it by individually selecting points and adjusting each curve. I then put a grain texture on the outlines as well as a drop shadow to add dimension.  Final upload for the letter G My aim for tomorrow is to make sure that I have more time to plan future uploads and not let the quality of my work become inconsistent after the last 2-3 days where I

11th March 2022 Today I designed posts for both letters E and F so that I could get ahead of things. I made my letter E by using rectangles and pathfinder tools to make it look like an E. I then copied it and transformed the size of it as well as rounding the corners and changing the colour of it. I used a blend tool to combine both shapes and then I added a plastic wrap texture to make it look shiny although I clicked it accidentally when I was looking for something else but I liked it so I kept it. I had also made an early concept for the letter F as well but I was unsure about it so I waited until the next day to see if I wanted to upload it.  Final upload for the letter E 12th March 2022 The first thing I did was look at the early concepts I had already done for the letter F and I decided that I wasn't fully sure about it even after adding a shadow to it for dimension. I then re-evaluated the direction I wanted to go with for the design and I decided to keep the shape regular b

Thursday 10th March 2022 Today's entry was a tough one to design. I had a few sketches that I wanted to design digitally but I let my impatience get the better of me and changed my final design more times than I could count. I had done some sketches of this concept that I chose and I think I ended up making it look like a hybrid version of 2 ideas I had in my sketchbook. The concept that I wanted to go with was making the letter D look like a spade. To do this, I drew some shapes out using the pen tool and a rectangle tool for parts of it. I then applied drop shadows onto some parts of the letter/spade and some other effects such as the scribble effect and a blur to finish the letter off.  Final upload for the letter D Sketches for the letter D My aims for tomorrow is to have drawn out E and F and have them ready to upload them as I have already drawn those letters out in my sketchbook. I think I will also continue to try and be ahead of things as possible with regards to sketching

Wednesday 9th March 2022 For today's letter, I struggled to come up with a quirky idea that would compliment the previous letters that I made as I realised the scale of the challenge I had taken on as well as the fact that I am balancing this with other work that I am doing. Once again, I had done some sketches for this yesterday although I ended up adding a couple more concepts to my sketchbook today before I designed them on Illustrator. For the digital design, I had initially settled on making a design resembling a horseshoe but I felt that the idea I had in mind for that wouldn't look different enough to the previous designs. I only say this because I would've had to use most of the techniques that I had used for the letter B for the letter C. This was when I settled on using the blend tool to blend the 2 versions of the letter C that I had put on the artboard together. I have only learnt this technique of blending 2 shapes together recently from a video I watched on In

Tuesday 8th March 2022 Today, I moved on to the letter B. I had drawn up a few sketches yesterday from which I had to choose one to redraw digitally. I had wanted to make this one in a calligraphic style but I struggled to translate that to a digital workspace. Therefore, I chose a different design that I knew I could make work for me. This ended up being 2 rectangles stacked onto one another which I then spent some time tweaking until I came to the conclusion that I liked the concept of making it into a domino and did exactly that while still making sure that it still looked like the letter B. I have also done some sketches for the letter C which I will draw and upload tomorrow. This is what I uploaded for the letter B These are my initial sketches for the letter B As I have now got into a routine of sketching on paper the day before I digitally draw the letters, my aim for tomorrow is to draw and upload for my entry for the letter C as mentioned above and work on some sketches for th

Monday 7th March 2022 Today was the real start of the challenge. The first thing I needed to do was decide which of my sketches I wanted to make on Illustrator for my final upload and I went for an upper case A which has now left me only doing upper case letters for the rest of the alphabet. Part of the way through drawing the letter on Illustrator, I realised that my basic letter reminded me of a character from the game Among Us. Therefore, I ran with that concept and designed and coloured the letter to make it look like the character while still resembling a letter.  This is the final design that I uploaded to Instagram. Here are my sketches for the initial concepts for the letter A.  My aim for tomorrow is to finish my sketches for the letter B and design and upload that to Instagram before the 11pm deadline. I only have 3 sketches so far but I have a few ideas of where I want to take the design. 

Hi there, Welcome to my blog. For the next 36/37 days, I am going to be participating in an Instagram challenge called 36 Days Of Type where all of the participants have to design a letter or number from the Latin alphabet and make it look unique. This blog is going to be an insight into my design process and working to a daily deadline of 11pm UK time to make sure a post is uploaded by that time. If you want to see the results of this, you can follow me on Instagram @reejcreates.  Sunday 6th March 2022 Today, I have made a start on my first designs for the letter A. The deadline isn't until tomorrow night but I thought I would get a head start on things as I have other pieces of work to do at the same time. The problem with making a typeface for something like this is the fact that there are a lot of major decisions to be made that will influence the style that I will use all the way through the challenge. I feel like with the drawings that I preferred the most, I am generally lea