You Can't Miss This: Character Illustrations and Movie Posters

A. This week on the blog I follow, Chris Spooner posted some adorable and detailed character illustrations. I thought these are really cute for illustrations but also for people who sometimes like to have an icon for their logo or website. These are pretty detailed but I love how much the color stood out. Illustrations like these can really add personality to a design and lighten the mood of any story. I think it's important to keep illustration in mind over photos sometimes, espeically if the story doesn't offer much option with creative photography. Here are a few of the characters. The blog gives a tutorial (every week) and this week it's a tutorial is how to create these cute illustrations. The cool thing is that there are separate tutorials based on what character you're trying to recreate. These are my favorites:

B. I am often inspired by posters and promotional or  marketing materials when I design things. I think movie posters do a great job of capturing the readers attention in a bold way. When I was designing my burger cover with the ketchup and mustard text, I did a lot of googling to find fonts and what not (I eventually just did it myself and photoshopped it) but I came across a pic of the movie poster for "Waiting," that ridiculous and gross movie with Ryan Reynolds as a waiter...but it made me realize how design inspiration can literally be found EVERYWHERE. I thought I'd check out some other movie posters and see how they worked with photos combined with typography and illustration. Here were some top posters from www.moviepostershop.com