I recently learned about a website designed by the typography foundry Hoefler & Co. from a television show called Abstract. The website, Discover Typography, showcases H&Co.’s typefaces in an interactive form. It’s called a “store window.” You can click on the different objects to see what fonts they are; it’s very fun and I could spend quite a bit of time looking through all the little items.
I thought it would be fun to create my own little “store window.” I decided to illustrate a bunch of things in a wallet and spread them out in a manner similar to H&Co.’s.
Below are all my illustrations without any text. I have the first variation right below and the updated one under it.
And here is my color palette:
I originally included a pink and a cream, but I removed them later because there were too many colors. The yellow almost provides a fourth color in the palette–olive green–which I especially like.
Next, I chose my fonts. I chose one sans serif display typeface (Thunder), one slab serif (Hatch), one serif that has a very interesting display font for numerical characters (Bely), one sans serif font for smaller text (Forma DJR Micro), and one handwriting font (FF Market). I italicized the second half of the words so that I can see the italics as well while I’m choosing from the fonts to put on my illustrations.
Before I show you the finished piece, enjoy some beautiful closeups.
Here are the polaroid photo and stamps. I wanted to show off pretty numerals on the stamps, so I put 22 on the bottom one for this year, 2022, and 1776 because stamps tend to have patriotic things on them (1776 is when the United States declared independence). The stamps are super simple, but they are probably my favorite part of the design. The cutout for the stamps’ edges is quite fun too; I like interesting edges. For the polaroid, I wanted it to look like someone wrote on it, so I just wrote “The Art Museum!” because the picture looked artistic.
Here are the quarters! I quite like these, though they don’t look very good if you zoom in on them this far. The eagle is ugly.
This gum looks quite sleek and modern; it looks rather fancy too. I was going to do some sort of repeated text over the wrapper, but I already did that for the instant floss packet (which you’ll see later). They are located right next to each other, so I thought it would look monotonous if they both had repeated text.
Here is the wallet! I don’t particularly love the wallet; its details don’t look that great together. This is actually the only piece with three dimensions in the artwork, but I actually kind of like that. It makes the wallet stand out a little bit, which is good because everything else goes inside the wallet.
And for the last closeup, the driver’s license! I didn’t include everything a driver’s license had (because a driver’s license has a lot of things), but I think it still looks very driver’s license-y. I have the girl’s signature below the photo and even a little organ donor circle! I like the “eyes” section; it says “gone” because her eyes are nonexistent. You may also notice that Penelope Edgar lives on Annabel Street (from Annabel Lee by Edgar Allen Poe) in Raventown (from The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe). I made many things Edgar Allen Poe related mostly because I gave Penelope the surname of Edgar.
The two close-ups before this driver’s license have Edgar Allen Poe related things. The wallet’s brand is Lenore (from The Raven) and the gum’s brand is Pendulum Chewing Gum (from The Pit and The Pendulum). Plus, Pendulum Chewing Gum rhymes, which is an added bonus!
Here is the finished piece! Please note that you probably aren’t seeing the finished piece because I probably changed something since I uploaded this image.
Here is a list of everything from top to bottom, left to right: The Craft Store gift card, Allen’s Deli coupon, paper scrap with Penelope’s email and phone number, small paper scrap with a phone number, the wallet, a piece of gum, the driver’s license, two quarters, an instant floss pack, The December Bookstore coupon, a polaroid photo, two stamps, and the Lee’s Burgers gift card (which I only realized later sounds like I was copying Lee’s Sandwiches).
The gift cards were pretty fun (top left corner and bottom right corner). I updated the flower on The Craft Store’s gift card two times, each revision getting simpler and simpler. Lee’s Burgers was inspired by (but changed a lot from) a Dairy Queen gift card; they have an interesting logo with some abstract pieces behind the text. It is called Lee’s Burgers because that is Annabel’s last name in Edgar Allen Poe’s Annabel Lee.
The coupons (top middle and bottom left corner) are my least favorite part and they still are not satisfactory, but I decided to leave them be. The 25% off gift card is for December Bookstore, and The Raven takes place in December, so I decided to name the store December. The buy-one-get-one-free coupon is for Allen’s Deli, which is just taken from Edgar Allen Poe’s name. The barcodes took quite a while to make, so I just copied the barcode over from the first coupon to the second.
I also have two little scraps of paper in the wallet; these pieces were quite fun to make. I like the torn edge a lot since it gives the piece more variety. Penelope’s email is edgar.penelope@bells.com because of the poem The Bells by–you guessed it–Edgar Allen Poe. Lastly, we have the little Instant Floss Pack! I really like this thing even though it’s super simple. Repeated text is always fun.
I hope you enjoyed seeing my “store window” being created! In the end, it wasn’t really a typography “store window”; instead, it was just a fun illustration. And besides, it can’t really be a store window if I’m not selling any fonts. Which was your favorite piece in the drawing? Thank you for reading and happy illustrating đź’»
Whimsical Watercolor 