A cheeky wink from Mike Watt captures spontaneity perfectly

May 12 2011

Most illustrated type is employed to embellish a headline that has been painstakingly sculptured by the Copywriter out of every possible turn of phrase that might express the same meaning. An illustrator is then employed to craft the sentence into a visual depiction of the meaning of the headline. The whole process is judged by a round table of decision makers who add their opinions and the illustrator continually moulds the headline until it appeals to everyone.

Whilst this highly deliberate reduction process may work in the case of one way communication ie. speeches, announcements, written prose or advertisements it does not capture the spontaneity of a happy penguin’s wink and smile or the chaotic back and forth of text based communication.

Take a scroll through the process below and you’ll appreciate Mike Watt’s gradual realisation of the above.

The first thing you’ll note is the charm of the penguin’s wink and smile.

Then you’ll see a very well crafted penguin made of typical text messages. Whilst it proves Mike’s great eye for design it doesn’t capture the chaotic nature of chatting by text.

The final artwork balances Mike’s ability to make a penguin out of words with the brief’s requirement to capture the clumsy frenetic energy of people texting each other. Despite the realisations along the way one element held strong throughout the whole project. From the original sample to the final animation. The penguin’s wink and smile.

Good design is the ability to stay focussed on the most potent core method to express the message.

; )

Click here or any image below to see Mike’s full portfolio.