Each October Samuel Ybarra and I hold an 8-hour boot camp in calligraphic arts for AIGA during Phoenix Design Week. Since the branding and aesthetics for PHXDW change drastically from year to year, we have created lettering for this event in a variety of styles ranging from acid pop to gothic. In 2019 the style was vaporwave. Using design components and colors from the assets kit provided I used several concentric flourishes to leverage the tension between minimalism and maximalism.
The treatment started with a sketch to help conceptualize where the expressive flourishing would go.
Larger scale sketches were performed in ink with a broad pen in the Fraktur style to further develop the aesthetic. While not masterworks themselves, the purpose was to iterate more possibilities.
The final design was vectorized in Illustrator and integrated with the existing vaporwave assets.