Monkey Evolution

In my latest project, a birth announcement for good friends, the design of the main graphic has evolved in a really nice, organic way.

Lauren and I started talking about the tone they wanted to strike, and we liked the idea of being a little funny. They’re funny and sarcastic people – not the type to do a really flowery birth announcement , but then again you can’t really be too funny, or sarcastic at all, in a birth announcement. It really is all about joy in the end.

This is their first child, and I knew they were debating how to hyphenate the last name: Klein-Onkeles or Onkeles-Klein. At some point I came up with the jingle, “First of her kind, she’s an Onkeles-Klein”. I’m sure they have other reasons for the name order than this card, but it stuck. (After all, nothing rhymes with Onkeles.)

Lauren also liked the idea of monkeys as a graphic element. She said in Spanish it’s common to remark about a baby, “que monito!” which literally means “what a little monkey” but is truly a term of endearment – what a little cutie.

The first monkey image that came to my mind was the monkeys from the game Barrel of Monkeys – I think because those are a really graphic shape that I knew would translate in a flat image. (Though in retrospect…not cute.) I liked the idea of repeating graphic pattern that breaks with one monkey in the midst of the pattern, being “first of its kind.”

I made mockups of this concept which were mildly successful, but then the parents-to-be found an image of a child’s stationary, with really cute monkeys, from Dear Olive. They’re adorable, and much more suitable inspiration for a baby announcement. And the image of a monkey on a vine makes for a nice overall graphic that can anchor the card and balance a photo, which we knew all along we wanted to include.

So I set to work on my own version of a cute monkey on a cute vine. I modeled shapes from two unrelated images from istockphoto – a cross-with-vine image and a more cartoony monkey with no tail and big arms and legs. In the end, I’m really happy with my little monito and super excited for the card to take shape.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 6th, 2008 at 10:52 am and is filed under Projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.