27 May 2018

In Which We Recreate The Colossus/Guardian Sticker As A Vector Drawing

3532A.
Just very recently I had another absolutely satisfying interaction with the people at Living Computers in Seattle, who wanted to use the Colossus/Guardian 2020 campaign sticker design for stickers meant to be sold in the gift shop.

This is always a good thing. I really adore the LC people, who are some of the most straight-up ethical people you'll encounter when it comes to creatives.

The original design was a quick one-off done in JPG format in Adobe Photoshop CS4. They wanted to release a limited edition sticker in a bigger size, and more durable - appropriate for a car's bumper, for example. But the trouble with the pixel image is ... well, I'll be everyone reading this knows. You size up, and the jagged edges show. So, a vector version was called for.

Break out the old Illustrator CS4 and hit the old iMac.


Was it fun? Yes, it was fun. Also, since I'd gotten to see Colossus: The Forbin Project a couple-three times since, I'd noticed that the Guardian logo, which I'd recreated from memory, was a bit 'off'; the starbucks on the red star were a bit squat, which gave room for a larger capital G letterform in it. I rectified that in the vector file, and, because AI has layers you can turn on and off, I included the original version as well as the updated version, so Living Computers can, as the President said Colossus can do with its weapons, select and deliver whatever they consider apprpriate.

The updated version looks like this. The Guardian logo is much closer to the film version now.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I've seen this as a bumper sticker on a coworker's car and just wanted to say it's absolutely brilliant.