Poke the Merch business card

For Anime North 2014 (a convention) , I designed a business card for the blog my friends and I run called Poke the Merch.  Last year we had convention goers ask us for a business card during our giveaway and unfortunately we didn't have cards to pass out at the time.  This year we were more prepared!

The colours of the card are meant to match the colours of our logo and blog. The printed version is fantastic!  The Poke crew couldn't be happier!

Developed in: Adobe Illustrator

Poke the Merch

Poke the Merch is now over a year old and it only just occurred to me that I had never posted the progress of how I developed the logo for that blog.  Since "Poke the Merch" was the original title my partner and I thought of, we decided we wanted a finger in our logo (to emphasize on the poke).

I took several photographs of my hand in certain poking positions.

 

Eventually I vectored over the one that looked best in Illustrator and tried out various designs.  Below are some results.

We used this one in the end as a watermark for our photographs.

This one is used for our banner so it's easier to develop a design around the hand.

You can check out the blog here!

Developed in: Adobe Illustrator

Professor Layton Layout

I wanted to use various designs and fonts in Adobe InDesign.  I realized I hadn't created any fake magazine covers yet so I tried that using my own photos.  Since I don't have images of models (for fashion magazines) I decided to be more creative by developing a cover for imported figures!  Inspired by Poke the Merch!

I did some editing on Professor Layton (the figure shown on the cover) so it was slightly brighter than the original.  I tried out various fonts and they seemed to work well with the cover.  There's some emphasis on more significant sections, such as orange for "figures".

I also included a spread with the cover.  I have a third page, but it's incomplete.  It's really just the final bits of my review for this figure.  The copy, which is a review of the figure, is by me.  You can read the full review at Poke the Merch's blog.  You'll also find many more pictures there!

Brown for the background seemed suitable because I wanted it to match Layton's dark hat and coat.  It also mixes well with his orange shirt.  I'm quite pleased with the final result.  I was able to play with the fonts (and sizes) and I was also able to incorporate my own photos.

Photos and copy by: Sui Chee

Developed in: Adobe InDesign CS3

Edited in: Adobe Photoshop CS3

Playing with InDesign

I picked up the Tales of Xillia Famitsu DX Pack early September and took some pictures for a post at my Poke the Merch blog. I took a photo of the Tipo plush and made a small page out of it. I really just wanted to get used to playing with text over images.

Edited in: Adobe Photoshop CS3
Developed in: Adobe InDesign CS3

Banner for Poke the Merch

Here's the main banner I made for the blog my friend and I are both running.

The photographs were taken by the both of us. The design was done by me.


After taking a photograph of my hand (more than once because it was a difficult task to do on my own), I vectored it and used it for our logo, which you can see at the top right.

Developed in Adobe Photoshop CS3