Rohdesign Weblog: Sketchtoons

Here you'll find all posts file under the Sketchtoons category.

June 17, 2008

Espresso Expert Sketchtoon Illustrations

I've just posted 5 screenshots of the sketchtoon-style illustrations I created for the Dutch design firm IN10 Communicatie (I'll post more screenshots as I get a chance).

They were drawn for the launch of a co-branded Krups & LavAzza campaign "30 Days to becoming an Espresso Expert" which was all in Dutch at this website:

http://www.espresso-expert.nl

I created illustrations for all 30 of the questions and other bits for Nicole, the art director at IN10 Communicatie (with Dutch translations provided) which she used to create an interactive site, along with her colleagues.

And how did Nicole find me? Via my Coffee Calendar Sketchtoons on Flickr.

The net is an amazing thing. :-)

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March 12, 2008

SXSW Interactive 2008 Sketchnotes

Welcome BoingBoing readers! Be sure to check out my follow-up post called Lessons Learned from my SXSW Sketchnotes too!

SXSW Interactive 2008 Sketchnotes are up!
I've just completed scanning, tuning and uploading 34 pages of sketchnotes I captured in my pocket Moleskine sketchbook at SXSW Interactive earlier this week.

I think the sketchnotes turned out well, and it was no problem for me to continuously create them for nearly every session I attended. I certainly went through ink in my G2 mini pens — I'm glad I brought several along.

With the SEED Conference sketchnotes being pretty popular, I'm curious to see how these SXSW sketchnotes are received. While sketchnotes capture concentrated concepts for each session well, I think they're even better at awakening ideas stored in the minds of session attendees.

Speakers Featured
Here are the speakers featured in the SXSW Interactive Sketchnotes: Naz Hamid, Veronica Belmont, Casey McKinnon, Ryan King, Glenda Bautista, Ariel Waldman, John Gruber, Michael Lopp, Jim Coudal, Dan Rubin, Didier Hilhorst, Eris Stassi, Lea Alcantara (sorry for the Leah misspell in the notes!), Ben Brown and Frank Warren.

Finally, here's the FlickrSlidr Slideshow set:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I did creating them! :-)

Stats on Flickr — Wow!

Check out Shaun Swick's very cool SXSW Sketchnotes 08 Flickr Set for another perspective.

Dave Gray does his style of sketchnotes on 3x5 notecards, check out his set from VizThink08.

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January 31, 2008

INeedCoffee: Creating the 2008 Sketchtoon Coffee Calendar

Michael Allen Smith, the publisher of INeedCoffee.com provided a great opportunity to share how I created my 2008 Sketchtoon Coffee Calendar, in the February 2008 issue of INeedCoffee.

In the article, I share details of my inspiration, how I researched coffee drinks and the process of sketching, scanning and production to create the 2008 Sketchoon Coffee Calendar.

Here's a teaser:

A few years ago, my wife and I went looking for coffee-themed calendars to be used as gifts for coffee-loving friends. We were very surprised to find none in the calendar kiosks at the local malls or at coffee shops and very few to choose from online.
Being creative people, we decided to create our own calendar, using Cafe Press to print them. Our first calendar used black and white photos and was received very well by our 2 friends.

About the same time, I'd been working on a drawing style I had created called Sketchtoons where I mixed loose sketches with hand-written notes in my Moleskine sketchbook. I decided to do a new calendar, creating sketchtoons for 12 coffee drinks.

In this article, I'll document how I came up with the ideas, drew, scanned and colorized them for use in calendars and other items, and then marketed and sold the calendar with no budget.

I invite you to read the entire article: Creating the 2008 Sketchtoon Coffee Calendar and check out the excellent coffee resources on INeedCoffee.com.

Even better: get in touch with Michael and submit your articles, reviews, and artwork for potential publication in a future monthly issue of the INeedCoffee Newsletter.

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December 15, 2007

2008 Sketchtoon Coffee Calendar Update

3 weeks ago today, I released the 2008 Sketchtoon Coffee Calendar, and since then, I've been pleased with the results. Here are some highlights:

54 calendars have been purchased since Saturday, November 24th.
The quality of the printing from Cafe Press is quite good (see the photos).
I've had positive feedback about the calendar grid for actual use as a calendar, as the days in the grid aren't covered with images or text.
The Sketchtoon Calendar Set on Flickr has been viewed 2,500 times.
Both the Vertical and Square iPhone/iPod/Palm wallpapers have been popular.
The original Sketchtoon Calendar post from my blog has the number 1 position in natural search results on Google.

It's been an interesting and fun experiment. I'm learning new things, and have been meeting many interesting people through the project.

The calendar still has a brief window of opportunity for sales, probably through mid January or so. I'll be interested in seeing where sales go from here — hopefully I can earn a few more sales before 2008 arrives.

Buy the Sketchtoon Calendar: 2008 Sketchtoon Coffee Calendar: $19.99 + shipping.

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December 6, 2007

2008 Sketchtoon Coffee Calendar: Top Spot on Google

Happened to search at Google on the term coffee calendar yesterday, and it turns out my little 2008 Sketchtoon Coffee Calendar owns the top spot of the natural search results.

Holy smokes!

Turns out that Ricardo Levins Morales' very cool 2008 Coffee Calendar is in second position on the first Google results page.

I'm not quite sure how this happened—I'm not complaining—but it's surprising.

Actually, it's not that surprising in one sense. in my research I've found very few coffee calendars available. There are a couple, but far fewer than I imagined ought to be out there, considering how many coffee fans there are in the world.

This is also a good reason for putting in regular effort, day in and day out, to build and maintain a quality blog. When it comes time to share or sell something (especially yourself) all that work can pay off.

Buy It Today: 2008 Sketchtoon Coffee Calendar: $19.99 + shipping.

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November 30, 2007

Square Sketchtoon Coffee Wallpapers for Palm & iPod

It seems the vertical 320 x 480px coffee sketchtoon wallpapers for the iPhone, iPod touch and Palm OS devices with vertical screens are quite popular!

Since square-formatted screens on Palms and iPods can also make use of wallpapers, I've created a new set of twelve 320 x 320px wallpapers.

Each coffee wallpaper is a 320 x 320px color JPG file, available as a free download from Flickr, for personal use.

Coffee Calendar
If you like the wallpapers, please consider picking up a Sketchtoon Coffee Calendar for yourself or a coffee-loving friend as a unique gift as a way to say thanks.

Donations
Not a calendar person? consider a PayPal donation, and I will be happy to send you a complete set of 12 JPGs as a ZIP file:

Thanks, and have a great weekend! :-)

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November 26, 2007

Sketchtoon Coffee iPhone/iPod touch Wallpapers

Now that the Sketchtoon Coffee Calendar is complete and available for sale, I've been considering ways to make other interesting items with these illustrations.

Today I was inspired by Les & Ian's comments on my last post to create a custom 12-pack of sketchtoon coffee wallpapers, designed especially for iPhone and iPod touch screens.

Each sketchtoon coffee wallpaper is a 320x480px color JPG file, available at Flickr as a free download for personal use on your iPhone or iPod touch.

If you like the wallpaper art, consider picking up a Sketchtoon Coffee Calendar for yourself or a coffee-loving friend as a unique gift.

Update 2007-11-28: I've uploaded Flickr, having adjusted the images to fit properly within the clear window on the iPhone/iPod touch login screen. If you have an older version, check out the updated images and get a new version.

Palm and Windows Mobile Users: Please drop me a line and let me know if you're interested in wallpapers for your devices. I'm currently gauging whether I want to produce these in a few more sizes, like 320x320 and 240x320. Let me know what sizes you might prefer.

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November 24, 2007

2008 Sketchtoon Coffee Calendar is Available!

2008 Sketchtoon Coffee Calendar now complete and up for sale! You can buy it for $19.99 plus shipping at CafePress, with US and international shipping available.

Last year, I started drawing sketchtoon style coffee illustrations in my Moleskine sketchbook in ink, scanning each illustration into the Mac for colorization in Photoshop.

Each month's illustration features a different coffee drink, with several unique drinks from various areas of the world, like the Flat White from down under and the Greek Frappe. Check out the cover and 12 illustrations at Flickr. I'm very pleased with how the calendar turned out.

Sketchtoon Photos
I've posted several photos of the original ink sketchtoons to Flickr:

It's a great gift idea for coffee lovers who would enjoy a unique coffee calendar.

Buy It Today: 2008 Sketchtoon Coffee Calendar: $19.99 + shipping.

Related Links
Check out Ricardo Levins Morales' very cool 2008 Coffee Calendar too!

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November 17, 2007

2008 Sketchtoon Coffee Calendar Preview

This week I've completed the final eight sketchtoon illustrations for my 2008 Sketchtoon Calendar, which will be going on sale soon:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

I've had lots of interest in my sketchtoons, so I've decided to post samples of each calendar page on Flickr and share the previews here. I'm planning to have the calendar ready for sale by next week Saturday, just in time for Christmas.

Once I complete the cover illustration, I'll be creating the calendar with an on-demand printing service. I've used use Cafe Press for calendar printing in the past, however, I plan to check out other on-demand printing services. If you have a service to recommend, let me know with a comment below.

Be the First to Know!
If you're interested in the 2008 Sketchtoon Calendar, and want to be the first to know when goes on sale, email me.

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September 26, 2007

John Coltrane: Impressions Music Sketch

Last week, I had to get my mind in a logo sketch groove after working on the computer most of the day.

To do this, I sometimes choose a music-driven exercise to get into the rhythm of sketching.

Music Sketching
Pick a fresh page in your sketchbook, then queue up and listen to a piece of music, while expressing what you're hearing and feeling on the page.

Don't worry about making it "right" because it's based on how you feel at the moment. Because it's open and free, this can relax you to enjoy the feel of pen or pencil on paper.

This process really helps me focus in on the music, loosens my hand up and gets me in the right frame of mind for sketching.

Above is the sketch created while listening to Impressions by John Coltrane, a wonderful piece which itself helps me loosen up for sketching.

Give it a try sometime!

Related Links
Music-driven Moleskine Sketches

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September 8, 2007

Springy Motorcycle Sketchtoon

Last weekend we had a nice visit to see family in Baraboo, Wisconsin. While there, we visited Oschner Park, right across the street from where my dad grew up. We saw the small zoo, and wound up at the play area of the park.

I'd packed my Moleskine sketchbook, and saw this funny little spring-loaded motorcycle ride. My son and several of the other kids were jumping on and riding this thing, bouncing around in random patterns.

I liked the mix of tan and red paint on the cycle, so I captured this young girl riding it in maybe 3 minutes. I really like how the drawing has structure but remains loose and chaotic.

This sketch has been added to the Illustration Friday topic: momentum.

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June 21, 2007

Sketchtoon: Two Bald Guys at Chipotle

I received a free burrito coupon from Chipotle in my neighborhood and today, decided to redeem that sucker and enjoy a lunch away from the office, and the first day of summer.

While enjoying my steak burrito, guacamole and chips, I pulled out my Moleskine planner and made this quick doodle of two bald guys eating lunch on the patio across from me.

I thought it was interesting that they were both bald, apprently by choice. Been seeing more of the "bald by choice" lately, either to hide a receeding hairline or just for the look of it.

The sketch was done with a Niji Stylist felt tip pen and colored moments ago with Prismacolor pencils, before I scanned and posted the image on Flickr.

Got the date wrong. It should be 6/21, and it's Chipotle not Chipolte, whoops! :-)

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May 4, 2007

What Would My Great Grandfather Think of Me?

Have you ever wondered what your ancestors would think of you, your life and the time you live in?

About a month ago, I received a book of family history, which traces our family history from Bobitz, Germany in the Mecklenburg region (near the Baltic Sea).

My great grandfather, John Martin, came to the US in 1873, and settled near Juneau, WI where he lived, established a farm, and had children, one of which was my grandfather Edwin.

What Would He Think?
Reading through our family's story, I've begun to ask: what would John Martin think of me, my life and the time, place and culture I live in?

I ask this probably for validation, but I think more for curiosity sake. I'd be very interested in his reactions, and to hear his wisdom, learned from years of hard experience as an immigrant, husband and father.

I wonder if he would he be amazed at the Internet, which allows me to work from Milwaukee with colleagues, clients and friends around the world? Being a farmer, what would he think of the virtual world I live in?

Would the "magic" of computers and tiny gadgets surprise him or would they seem like cheap flashing toys to him?

I wonder what he would have been like, quiet or talkative? A reader? An artist?

Obviously, I may never know, but it's interesting to ponder.

If I Were to Guess...
I think he would be proud to see the family continuing on, adapting to the world in which it found itself. John Martin lived through some amazing shifts in culture: the German Revolution, the turn of the century and the rise of industrialism, World War I, the Great Depression and more. How cool it would be to hear his stories now.

The sketch above was done early this morning, as these questions bounced around in my head. I wanted to capture an image of John Martin as a way of personalizing and honoring him as my great grandfather.

John Martin, I hope I'm making you proud.

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April 30, 2007

Sketchtoon Coffee Calendar Preview

While riding the train to Chicago with my friend Sean last week, he reminded me of a sketchtoon calendar project that's been on the backburner due to my very busy schedule.

Sean saw the black and white sketches in my Moleskine sketchbook, and heard my idea of selling the calendar online, to people and small coffee houses. He seemed very excited about the coffee calendar idea.

Now I'm reinvigorated to finish the project! :-)

While I'm wrapping up the final art, I've decided to share previews of 4 calendar pages, to gauge interest in a Sketchtoon Coffee Calendar for 2008.

Would a calendar like this interest you? Feel free to leave comments here or on Flickr. I'm very interested in hearing your thoughts.

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April 27, 2007

UX Intensive Chicago 2007: Thoughts & Sketchnotes

This week I attended Adaptive Path's UX Intensive: Interaction Design Workshop in Chicago. I've decided to share my thoughts on the event and my set of sketchnotes on the blog.

UX Intensive event was a 4-day series of workshops and lectures, and of those 4 days, I attended 1: Interaction Design. Here are my thoughts about that particular event:

The Speakers & Venue
Overall it was a good experience. Dan Saffer and Kim Lenox are both very smart, talented designers who know their stuff. I gleaned good ideas for tweaking my own design process, and was affirmed in the approach and process I already follow.

The Black Orchid was an OK venue. The room was relatively spacious, and the food was quite good. The tables, however, were designed for drinks while listening to jazz — not ideal for taking notes or working, and not positioned ideally for a conference. I got a bit of a cramp from sitting at an angle at my table, trying watch the speaker and take notes.

Workshop or Lecture?
UX Intensive was billed as a "workshop" even though Wednesday's Interactive Design session was actually a day-long series of lectures. Even though the topic very much interested me, by about 2pm I was having a hard time focusing, even after a second Starbucks cappuccino.

I heard from Matt and Que, 2 guys I met at my table, that Monday's Design Strategy and Tuesday's Design Research sessions were true workshops, with activities and interaction between the attendees — much different than Wednesday's lectures.

Concepts I Liked
There were many good ideas shared by Dan and Kim, some of which I'll note below:

• Research is useless in a raw, unstructured form. It's critical to filter the information and draw insights and conclusions from your research that can be applied to the project. I liked Dan's suggestion to use physical and visual representations of research, using post-it walls and drawings on various surfaces.

• Brainstorming for quantity and brainstorming in categories. Dan suggested brainstorming sprints with limited times and an emphasis on many ideas in that time. I also liked his idea of brainstorming within narrower categories, then displaying findings in a matrix or a grid.

• Failure is OK. A 50% failure rate was suggested as a good thing. I've noticed that in my sketches, the more ideas I can get through the sooner I usually find a solution. Trying out ideas that may fail, lead to a good ideas, so I find this to be very true.

• Good designers make better guesses. Intuition is important in design, and it's based on making good guesses. Dan shared principles and techniques for making better guesses and decisions.

• Living Documents. Kim Lenox talked about designing for suites and platforms, suggesting the use of living documents, sharing information and innovations, consistency and that interaction designers need to think about the integration of 3 key areas: the PC, the Internet and mobile devices.

• All products are broken. By starting with this premise, we're free to try and improve products rather than making them perfect and completely free of brokeness. Dan talked about good areas to focus on for fixes, breaking fixes down into smaller chunks, and the use of quick n' dirty wireframes with screenshots (I use this approach, and it works great!)

• Constant Communication. Use various tools such as blogs and wikis within your team, to keep communication lines open with each other, and to capture information as living documents.

View my detailed notes in my UX Intensive sketchnotes on Flickr.

Suggestions
I'll end this post with my thoughts on how the Design Interaction portion of the UX Intensive event could be improved:

• Call it a workshop only if it has workshop activities. I came expecting interaction and activities with my design colleagues and instead got a day of lectures. Workshop activities would have broken up the time, made it easier for me to focus on the ideas and apply them practically.

• Add more breaks. We had breaks for lunch and for the morning and afternoon sessions, which were great. However, because of the day-long lecture format, by the afternoon I needed mini breaks in-between the individual sessions. By about 2pm I was losing focus on the topics that a few mini-breaks may have helped with.

• Show more real-world examples. We had some nice examples in the lectures by Dan and Kim, but I wanted to see more of them to illustrate the concepts presented. Having more examples might also have helped my focus in the afternoon.

• Go narrower and deeper. I think reducing quantity of material covered and focusing on deeper real-world examples, discussions on those ideas and workshop activities might improve the relevance of the information to attendees. So much info was presented, that I couldn't adequately digest, discuss or apply with those ideas to my own design practices.

I hope these thoughts are helpful to fellow designers, and might be useful to Adaptive Path in tuning and perfecting their UX Intensive series in Amsterdam in June.

Many thanks to MakaluMedia (my employer), for sending me to the event.

Technorati Tags: uxichi07, chicago, design, rohdesign

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April 26, 2007

Korean Soup Sketchtoon

On Wednesday I had a great visit to Chicago, for Adaptive Path's UX Intensive Interactive Design Workshop in Chicago's Old Town. I'm currently scanning in my sketch-notes from the event (which I will post tomorrow), but in the meantime I wanted to post a sketchtoon from my dinner in the evening.

I had the pleasure of traveling to Chicago with my friend Hyeon "Sean" Kim on the Amtrak Hiawatha to UX Intensive. After the event, I met Sean on the Brown line EL train at Sedgwick to Rockwell station to visit a Korean restaurant on the North side of town.

Sean had a Korean restaurant in mind, but after walking to Lawrence Avenue and searching, we realized it had closed or moved, because a new condo was sitting right at the corner where it should have been. It was actually good fortune for us to walk the neighborhood, since we came across Han Bat, a small, family-run Korean Soup restaurant, right on Lawrence Avenue.

Our Korean dinner was delicious. Sean was worried that old-school, hard-core Korean Seolleongtang soup might be too unusual for me. Now he knows I love unusual new things, including Korean soup, kim chee, pickled radishes and corn tea! :-)

The sketchtoon was created in my Moleskine sketchbook, while riding home on the EL. Sean and I contentedly recalled the details of our delicious Korean dinner. I colored this piece later on, to add just a little more detail.

Now I can't wait to try more Korean foods!

Technorati Tags: chicago, korean, uxichi07, rohdesign

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April 24, 2007

Doubt Sketchtoon Notes

A few weeks ago, Tom Slye, the youth director at my church gave an excellent message on doubt. He talked about what doubt is, and offered ways to think about and deal with doubt in a realistic ways.

I often take notes during messages, as it helps my mind process the words. Lately I've been toying with the idea of capturing notes in a graphical way — using typography for emphasis — to force myself to focus on the core of the talk within a limited space.

On the right is my one-page sketchtoon from Tom's talk on doubt, which I think turned out pretty well.

There are a few things I want to try on future talks, like mental imagery and drawings embedded in the text, even color if I can pick up a small set of markers or pencils that are easy to carry along with my Moleskine sketchbook.

In general, I find sketching out notes offers a different, more focused way of engaging of my whole brain, rather than just left brain.

Just yesterday I was inspired to explore this idea of sketching notes, when I came across Dave Gray's wonderful LIFT Conference sketches. His stylized sketch notes are another cool way to capture notes from a talk in a more visual way.

Here's a great talk by Dave Gray and Dana smith on Visual Thinking, with some exercises you can follow along with. Be sure to check out Dave's Visual Thinking School on Squidoo. All good stuff, check it out!

I'll post more sketch notes here as I do them, now that I'm inspired to explore this area a bit more. If you have ideas for me, leave them in the comments! :-)

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April 2, 2007

Weekend Sketches

This weekend I made a conscious effort to bring my Moleskine sketchbook with me everywhere, having been challenged by Tommy Kane's Push Yourself post last week.

Below are two pieces I sketched this weekend:

Sketch 1: My son Nathan and I went to his preschool on Saturday for an Easter egg hunt. Part of the afternoon included giving the kids helium-filled balloons to bounce and chase around the church fellowship hall. The kids had such a blast — I had to try and capture Nathan's joy at play. This one was pretty quick and loose, with my focus on capturing the feeling I had, rather than being perfectly proportional.

Sketch 2: The right page was done Saturday night, after seeing the the film Peaceful Warrior. The film was a little cheesy and full of platitudes for dialogue. Still, the phrase "There are no ordinary moments" seemed to bubble up in my mind just before bed. I grabbed my sketchbook and let the idea direct my sketch, trying not to think too much about the technical details. My approach was to look at this phrase as a challenge to sketch those "un-ordinary moments" rather than lose them.

As I prepared the scan today, I realized Nathan's balloon-jumping sketch was one of those "un-ordinary moments" I'd captured Saturday morning, before the words themselves were spoken in the film, later the same evening.

Thanks Tommy for the challenge to sketch, especially when it's hard. If you're reading this post and are thinking about sketching again, or for the first time — do it! :-)

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