A-Z Plants Poster

This exercise in graphic design has been on the baby project queue for quite some time, and I'm so happy to finally see this work realized.  Many children's rooms contain some sort of art that features the alphabet.  I wanted to tie in a small lesson in plants with an alphabet theme.  So I sketched up this poster in which a plant is identified for every letter of the alphabet.

An aside to all my friends in landscape architecture: I wrestled with whether to use the latin names of the plants or the common names.  For example, did 'A' stand for 'Acer', the latin species name for maple, or was 'A' going to be for 'Ash', whose latin name is Fagus?  Eventually I decided to go with the friendlier common names and include the latin as bonus information.

I sketched a leaf for each plant and tried to highlight whatever features of the leaf that helped me to remember it.  I sketched in pencil, then finalized the drawing in ink, and then scanned each image.  I arranged these leaves around a stylized tree and manipulated the scans in Photoshop.  The text was organized in Adobe Illustrator.  Once I had decided on the colors (which were chosen to compliment the baby's room) and finalized the design I had the poster printed at Kinkos.  It is approximately 18"x24".

That doesn't seem like it would take that long... but this exercise took me quite some time.  I really like the way it turned out, but the process of drawing and scanning and cleaning up the linework to work in a digital format is very time consuming.... and fun!  I'm a nerd, but I really enjoyed putting this together and figuring out the best way to organize this information.  Sorry to add a watermark to the digital image above, but I hope to try to sell copies of these online through Etsy at some point.

And since we're talking graphic design... here is an update on the 'State Series' that I put together, now framed and hung.  These frames are 10"x10" from Ikea.  I put each graphic together in Adobe Illustrator and just had the digital file printed on 11"x17" cardstock.  I forgot to let you know what each print says (it's probably difficult to read in these images).  

LA - 'Your mother's home is in Jennings'

MS - 'Your father's home is in Tupelo'

NC - 'We met and married in the mountains of Montreat'

GA - 'Your father when tot school in Atlanta'

SC - 'We bought our first home in Columbia'

CA - 'We welcomed you to the world in Sacramento'

All the artwork in the baby's room is now hung, so, I promise to post photos of how it is all coming together soon!