*Winner!* Communication Arts 4th Typography Competition

These days, there are quite a few competitions in the design world for us illustrators and hand letterers to enter and showcase our work and be judged by industry peers - some of them being serious industry heavyweights. A few of these competitions are the ones you *really* want to get somewhere in but often don't, as they are tough as old boots to make the grade in...Communication Arts is one of the big ones. Oh yes.

If I have a project I feel is strong enough, I enter it to either CommArts Illustration or Typography competitions and then usually hear nothing more about it!

Not this year though.

© Jill Calder 2013

I worked on two fantastic projects last year that really stretched my lettering skills and gave me the chance to play with different ways of lettering as well as combining and fusing lettering with my illustration too. 

©Jill Calder 2013

The first project was the much publicised Little Black Book of Seafood, commissioned by the Leith Agency in Edinburgh (written about here). The second project was a monthly editorial for Reader's Digest USA for their legendary Word Power quiz. 
This how I described my competition entries for Word Power:
“Each month, two words, paired either with their correct meaning or a (believably) false definition, are selected from the multiple-choice Word Power quiz in Reader’s Digest, and illustrated using a whimsical blend of hand lettering and imagery with a limited color palette. The final pieces were spot illustrations, so they also needed to pack a punch visually.”

 I absolutely loved working on both these projects as they really stretched me, allowed me to experiment and try new things out with my lettering. Needless to say, the creatives who commissioned me - Andy Archer and Bob Lovie at The Leith Agency and Marti Golon at Reader's Digest - encouraged me but also trusted me enough to give me the space to do my thing. A sign of a good art director!

© Jill Calder 2013

So I entered both projects to the coveted Communication Arts 4th Typography Competition ( right on the deadline, as per usual) and expected nothing to come of it. So, imagine my surprise when I got the email from them to tell me that I had won not one but TWO Awards of Excellence for both these projects! Yes, I admit I did a little dance and the dogs got confused and started to bark.

Of the 1,498 entries submitted to this year's competition, only 152 were selected by a jury of respected creative professionals, representing the work of 132 type designers, hand-letterers, design firms, agencies, publishers and in-house creative departments.

All the winners are featured in the luscious Jan/Feb Typography Annual, which is OUT NOW  both in print and digital formats. 
Thank you CommArts!

© Jill Calder 2013

Sumo Arabic Brochure

Sumo Arabic Brochure, originally uploaded by jimmysumo.

The lovely folk at Sumo asked me to do some illustrations in connection with their project with an amazing new museum in Qatar.
Jim Richardson sent me through these pics of the brochure they designed with one of my illos on the cover.
It was an interesting job to do, as I had to draw a mixture of Arabic and Western people in the gallery setting (which looks like a giant sand dune, by the way) but at the same time, be respectful of Islamic customs and culture. I hope I got it right!
In the process of researching this job, I came across some fantastic Arabic art websites and blogs, such as Fann 3arabi...and discovered a couple of inspiring Arabic calligraphers too, such as Malik Anas, an Iraqi calligrapher based in Baghdad.