Happy Holidays!

Yesterday I launched my animal pin back button badges on my Etsy store and I just thought I’d do a little explanation/thought process breakdown on this space. When I first launched my Christmas cards (which have almost sold out completely! yay!) I received numerous messages from people telling me that they don’t write cards to other people anymore, but that they would buy whatever else I might make.

For a long time I’ve been thinking about screen printing tote bags, but the cost for the materials is something I cannot afford at the moment, and also the contributing factors of time and space. I am still a student after all!

I decided I’d do something with relation to the new year and Valentine’s Day and figured why not come up with cute-animal-pun-illustrated badges? I spent a night brainstorming over various puns and different ideas for the placement of text and animal. I had come up with a draft of 6 sketches and then eliminated two. Three days later I was editing digitally and sending off my order.

I wanted to make things flexible for people who don’t have significant others, or who just don’t buy into the cheesiness of animal puns and/or messages of love. Thus, the ‘Owl Always Be There’ badge is a relatively more platonic option for anyone(: My personal favourite is the one I’ve featured in this post – ‘You Octopi My Mind’; the purple is a great colour for catching attention 😉

I hope you have a great holiday season, wherever you’re reading this from. And if you have time, I really recommend watching The Hobbit and Frozen this season. I’m completely hooked on the soundtracks from both films!

Upcoming Projects

Hello everyone,

How was your week? It has been snowing in Toronto for about 12 hours and counting! I love fresh snow because it’s so soft and fluffy and kicking it sends it into flurries of falling snow again. I think I now understand the wonder about snowfall.

In other news, I’ve been working on a new set of products for As Told By Caro. I’m planning to sell button badges! I’ve got some draft designs done up already, I just need to add the colours and clean up the sketches! Here’s a sneak preview of the designs, let me know what you think!

Christmas is coming, I hope everyone has awesome plans for the holiday season!(:
Take care and stay warm!

I work for The Window.

  

On Left: Cover Page of Nov Issue
On Right: For The Love of Marriage by Will Balogh, Artwork by Caroline Teng.

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So today I finally get to show you who and what I work for: The Window.

The Window is a publication of New College, which is part of the University of Toronto, which is where I’m studying. For those who might not know the college system, it’s basically like having a house in secondary school except at the university level the system actually helps with administration.

What do I do for The Window? I’m a staff artist. I produce creative visual material to accompany writers’ articles.

So far, this has been a challenging experience – writers asking me to draw things I never thought I’d ever have to draw; meeting deadlines, usually a week and a half for two to three pieces of artworks and, perhaps one of the hardest things to face: myself and my expectations and fears.

Having no official artistic education except what we all learnt in Sec 1/2 about sketching or painting, I’m generally insecure about the skill set and knowledge I have with relation to more experienced artists and illustrators. This is the same for photography. I love so much of what other people do and like very little about what I produce. We are our worst critics. Nonetheless, I think I’m learning and that’s important.

We’re working on the third issue for December and I’m excited to see it turn out. The release of each issue has been a suprise for me because after I’m done with my artwork I generally return to my daily life. I don’t read the writers’ pieces or see how the layout editors have arranged the text on the page until the release of the issue. But mostly, it’s an exciting suprise.

The Window also has a tumblr for The Window Washer, the magazine’s advice columnist. Feel free to leave a question about anything at all and your question might feature in the next issue!(:

I might post jpegs of my work in the future so you can see it in greater detail. It’s just that I appreciate the layout designers’ work as well because it makes so much of an impact on the reading experience. I also can’t post it right now because I’m isolated in a secret location without my handy external hard drive (heh).

So yes, that is who I’m working for currently. It’s been an interesting ride and we’re slowly improving across the issues. I’m excited to see where it will take me.

Illustrated Maps

I’m not having too great a day and it’s raining and grey in downtown Toronto. But I just found this post (when I really should be studying): The Joy of Illustrated Maps In The Era of Google Earth.

Illustration hasn’t really been in my focal range since my post about Zestydoesthings, what with all the hand lettering and .. lettering in general. But I still love illustration. I personally feel that it requires vision and also technical skill and the more deftly one combines perspective with ideas, the better the illustration.

So here’s Laura Coyle, a freelance illustrator from Atlanta with her brilliant article that demonstrates each step of her map making/illustrating process. I love the colours of her final product (she uses a Pantone Colour Bridge guide!) and her subtle shadows which (probably) makes all the difference. I also love how she talks about saving swatches and other illustration elements for future use. It might be common sense to some, but I have never thought of diligently saving my swatches.

Perhaps my favourite part about the map is the handwritten (of course) locations that are highlighted on the map. It is something I’ve been wanting to do with my photography for some time now but I haven’t figured out how to do it without a tablet and yet not mess up the ratio of the sizes and weights of my writing. But that’s a different story.

Anyway, I’ve recently gotten a chance to do an infographic and I’m super excited but also really scared about it. Infographics are tough stuff and the really good ones are deceptively simple and amazingly concise. Ah, well. Have a good week guys!

what I’ve been up to:

Since school started three weeks ago I haven’t really been posting things that I’ve been doing in terms of hand lettering and/or photography so today I decided I should share a few of my work so far and also clue you in to other things I have been doing.

At University of Toronto, the Arts & Science Faculty’s student population is divided into colleges such that administration and student interaction can be better and more easily facilitated. I was recently hired by my college – New College, to provide and produce artwork for their official student publication, The Window. Our first issue comes out on Friday, 4th October and features interesting articles ranging from etymology to the Argonauts game in Toronto earlier in September. They also have an advice column and Tumblr and their guru is the window washer (get it? haha).

I’ve also been working on a logo for Skule’s (UofT’s Engineering Faculty) SCORe club. They are a community of engineering students who come together to participate and organise non-profit and volunteer activities through the year. And most recently I’ve been working on a friend’s project called Project Happy Apples (PHA).  A friend of mine in medical school at the National University of Singapore asked me to hand letter some information title sheets and header titles for his presentation that is coming up. PHA is a student initiative that seeks to educate and increase awareness of palliative care and this is occurring on a close-to-nation-wide scale. I’m excited to see where the project goes and how my work will feature in it.

In whatever free time I have left, I doodle; the above two lyrics are my more recent works. There are nights where I really just need to relax and unwind, and I do so through these letterings. I’ve also begun to force myself out of referencing in a bid to see how comfortable I am without the constant imitation. Looking back on past work, I’ve definitely learnt to incorporate more relevant graphics and images into my lettering. What I want to master is blackletter/gothic typefaces – I still need to refer to online sources for those.

I’m glad to say that this has been the more exciting part of life in the past three weeks. My next couple of posts will probably revolve around the first The Window issue and/or the beginnings of an As Told By Caro store! October is an exciting month indeed(:

Zesty Does Things!

This is going to be a real quick post about this artist on tumblr, but he is nothing short of inspiring.

Zestydoesthings or, Toby Allen, is an illustrator who has worked as a 2D game designer. Holding a BA Hons Degree in Illustration and a Diploma in Art and Design, I have no other words to describe his work except that it is amazing. I love all of Allen’s work, in particular, this series that he just (re)started called Real Monsters.

Where should I even begin? The detail of the coffee stains? The colours? The illustrations? The concept of marrying real disorders with an embellished, personalised and captivating write ups? Simple yet so immensely powerful. My first thought when I was shown zestydoesthings’ tumblr was, ‘it’s like Lemony Snicket (author of A Series of Unfortunate Events), Tim Burton and Pixar rolled into one person!’ I am absolutely in love with his work. I might even buy a print or two or three; how am I going to choose!

National Day 2013

Singapore’s National Day always calls for nationwide celebrations and cheer. Every year we have the National Day Parade (NDP) which involves the Singapore military groups,  non-profit uniformed groups and many other performers. Making this graphic made me think about Singapore in ways I hadn’t previously. Suddenly I realise just how paradoxical it is that it is geographically so small yet it somehow holds the weight of so much ambition and history.

Being born in the 1990s, I’ve seen Singapore undergo quite a number of changes, especially landscape ones. The old national library that was made of brick where I used to go to read as a kid is gone and has made way for a modern glassy structure; King Albert Park was sold last summer for $150 million to build a condominium (goodbye McDonalds, we had good times when I was still in MGS); and the building that held some of my fondest memories – the old Kallang Stadium. I was fortunate to have participated in the 2007 NDP representing my Girls’ Brigade company. It was an experience I treasure very much because I always feel privileged to have stood in front of hundreds and thousands even if I was only a blur in the crowd. But what I remember most were the rehearsals leading up to 9th August. Every Saturday for three months I would count the curves of the roof in the stadium whilst watching the clouds tip toe quietly across them. I would watch the army contingents march in and out with perfect timing and during breaks I got to meet other girls whom I would otherwise have never met. I enjoyed it.

So much of Singapore has changed, even in the past two years I’ve been away, and I suppose it will only continue to change. Watching and reading from afar, I know Singaporeans wrestle with numerous issues and many say that they cannot remember when they were last satisfied with their lives. Work ethics, stress, expectations and amibitions have stretched us both ways. Yet somehow I find I was once happy in that place and I still look forward to going back because I associate Singapore with comfort, friends, familiarity and above all, the place I would call home. Surely then, there is comfort in the knowledge that home is about it’s people; I might hold a different passport or value system, or perspective, or opinion but I will always have these experiences and those are what make me Singaporean no matter where I go.