Default DesignTranquille

Though the first five designs would prove important for the project's initial success, only the default design would retain a high visibility over the long term. The subtle and minimal Tranquille was always designed to be the default, though design #002, Salmon Cream Cheese, was considered for a while due to its more immediate impact; thankfully, the decision was made in favor of Tranquille.

All images and text within the default design, aside from the body type, were digitally hand-painted in Adobe Photoshop. The intended rendering of the title text was a series of hand-painted calligraphic brushstrokes, but after spending an hour with a brush and india ink, Shea decided that the Calligraphic 421 font from Bitstream was a much more desirable option (FIGURE 12).

Figure 12. Calligraphic 421 samples.

Because Chinese characters are intricate and beautiful, many designers appreciate the extra detail they can add to a piece. Trying to avoid the typical Westerner method of joining a bunch of random Chinese characters together for mystique and detail, Shea spent some time researching the characters to add some meaning to the scroll hanging down from the top-left corner of the design. Well intentioned as this approach was, the result still ended up largely nonsensical anyway: The symbols chosen roughly represent a beginning, complete or whole, and skill in English.

Remember the project in grade school where you dumped some india ink onto a sheet of white paper, then blew on it with a drinking straw to create a black treelike shape, and finally pasted on crumpled pieces of tissue paper as "blossoms"? The tree in the bottom-right corner of the design grew out of fond memories of that project. As you can see from the screen shot, it went through a few revisions (FIGURE 13). The process involved sketching a rough outline with simple colors and then building up layered detail over top of it.

Figure 13. Building the tree illustration.