46

STEP 3: DIE DAUMENNAGEL SKIZZE

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The thumbnail is nothing new. I Ol H il ■ /fil
Even the great old German ^c"*4r ^L У^ T ^7v/

designers utilized daumennagel ^ч^и^'

ífee, just as we do today. a

These pencil sketches from ^^" ■^ .^P'^

1929 were done by the phe- / V У \ ^ИіИг *ЗУ

nomenally prolific trademark ^ f ,J^^^ 1 чя!г ^уД 5Г"

designer Philipp Seitz for the \ J Л0 Е^ІР*

Volksfreund Druckerei, a print- X \^S АШг^^^. Хж

mg firm. The final mark is „. Щ^^^^^^ш ^% ^^

shown above. Interestingly, it is j" l^Bà ЛЯІ

quite crude by today's stan- ^^^ ^^7

dards, and not so far advanced ^^^^^^ Jr/ilt-tpfc к

from the rough version. -.-.••• wrvi . .

Left, the thumbnails preceding the
tight pencil sketch, below, from
whkh Michael Doret's final art, right,
was created. I asked Doret if he felt
the tight sketch stage was still neces¬
sary given the computer's capabili¬
ties. Let's listen in, shall we, as
Michael Doret takes time out from
his busy schedule to address this
important question for our listening
audience at home.

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"I prefer to make a tight pencil sketch for whatever
I'm designing," he says. "Otherwise, I feel as though
I'm working in the dark; I have no sense of scale
working directly in Illustrator. I think going straight
to computer and not making a tight pencil sketch
would determine the direction of one's work. A
design often evolves from the capabilities of the
medium you're using." I agree. It would be difficult,
although not impossible, to create the complex
Bluejays lettering shown in the tight sketch at left,
without first drawing it out. So, I asked myself: Does
my own work suffer by my preference to go from
thumbnail right to computer? Am I wasting my eye¬
sight staring at the screen while endlessly moving
points back and forth instead of first working out my
designs in pencil? This might be a question all of us
should ponder.